How to Build a Home Bar for a Game Room

The bar is the part of a game room that decides whether people stay in it. A room with a fine table and nowhere to put a drink empties as soon as the game finishes. A room with a place to lean, somewhere to sit and something cold within reach keeps six people in it for an evening, and only two of them are playing at any given moment.

Height, decided first

For a 42 in bar top, the seat wants to be about 31 in, with anything from 29 to 33 in workable. For a 36 in counter, aim for about 25 in. Run your own surface height through the bar stool height calculator, and the full picture is in the bar and counter height chart.

Which to choose. Bar height puts a seated drinker at eye level with someone standing, which is sociable and suits a room where people move between playing and watching. Counter height is easier to get on and off, better with children and older guests, and less imposing in a room with a lower ceiling. In a game room with an eight foot ceiling, counter height is frequently the better call and bar height is the more common instinct. The trade is argued in bar height versus counter height.

How much bar you need

Then add the depth. A stool needs about 18 in of floor behind the surface to sit at, and a further 18 to 24 in for someone to walk past behind a seated person. So a bar against a wall in a circulation route wants roughly 3 to 3 ft 6 in of clear floor in front of it, and that band must not overlap the clearance band of a pool table. Overlapping those two is the single most common layout mistake in a game room, because both feel like empty floor when the room is empty.

Three ways to build it

The pub table, about $250 to $500

A bar height table with a pair of saddle stools or counter stools is the fastest useful version and it is genuinely good. It gives you the height, the surface and the seating, it moves when the layout changes, and it costs less than the cloth on a pool table. For most game rooms this is the right answer and the more elaborate versions are optional.

The bar cabinet, about $500 to $900

A bar cabinet with built-in outlets gives you storage, a serving surface and somewhere to plug things in, which is more useful than it sounds in a basement with two outlets. A cabinet with an integrated fridge combines the storage and the cold in one footprint, which is the efficient answer for a room where floor space is contested.

The kegerator bar, about $1,200 to $2,000

A double faucet kegerator or a single tap unit is the version people picture when they imagine a game room bar, and it is worth being honest about what it commits you to: one or two beers on tap for weeks at a time, a CO2 cylinder to store and exchange, and line cleaning every few weeks that nobody enjoys and everybody skips.

It is a genuinely good buy for a household that drinks enough of one beer to finish a keg while it is still good, and it is theatre for everybody else. The honest comparison is in kegerator versus beverage fridge, and the options in best kegerators.

Layout, and the clearance conflict

1. Put the bar against the wall furthest from the anchor game. The two clearance bands must not overlap, because a stool inside a cue band means moving a stool for every shot down that rail, and that is precisely how a room stops being used.
2. Face the seating toward the games, not away from them. People at the bar are spectators, and a bar facing a wall is a bar nobody sits at.
3. Keep the walking route behind the stools clear, at 18 to 24 in beyond the seated depth.
4. Do not put the bar between the door and the games. The traffic route through a room finds the shortest path, and a bar in it becomes a corridor rather than a place to sit.
5. Corner it if the room is tight. An L of bar in a corner seats four in the floor area a straight run seats two, and it puts the seated people facing each other, which is better anyway.

Electrical and services

Refrigeration plus arcade cabinets plus a projector on one basement circuit is a tripped breaker in the middle of an evening. A dedicated 20 A circuit for the bar is $200 to $600 if it is not already there and it is far cheaper specified while walls are open. Full detail in game room electrical planning.

On plumbing: skip it. A sink turns a weekend project into a renovation, and below grade it usually needs a pump as well as a drain. Nearly every home bar in practice runs on ice in a bucket and washing up in the kitchen, and the ones with sinks mostly use them as a shelf. If you do want one, it has to be designed around the drain before anything else is built.

On lighting: pendants over a bar top hang 30 to 36 in above the surface, on the dimmable ambient circuit rather than on the table pendant switch. A run of LED strip under the bar overhang costs almost nothing and does more for the feel of the room than the cabinetry does. See the lighting guide.

Storage, and the small things

• Glassware within reach of the bar, not across the room. A cabinet with doors keeps dust off, which matters in a basement.
• Somewhere for the games clutter. A cube storage unit behind the bar absorbs the balls, chalk, darts, spare pucks and controllers that otherwise live on the bar top. A bar covered in equipment is not a bar.
• A bin. Unglamorous and the difference between a room that gets tidied and one that does not.
• A popcorn machine or similar, such as a popcorn cart , if the room is also a film room. Pure theatre, and theatre is a legitimate goal here.

What to spend on and what to skip

Spend on the stools. They are the thing people are in contact with all evening, and cheap stools with a hard edge at the front of the seat are noticed within twenty minutes. Look for a footrest, because a stool without one is uncomfortable at bar height regardless of the cushion, and check the seat height against your surface rather than trusting the product name. Options are in best bar stools for a game room and the wider seating question in best game room seating.

Skip built-in cabinetry. It is the single most expensive line available in a game room, it fixes the layout permanently in a room whose layout usually wants to change once, and it adds nothing that a good freestanding cabinet does not. That money buys a much better anchor game.

Related

Heights are in the bar and counter height chart and the stool height calculator. Seating and viewing geometry for the screen corner is in the seating and viewing distance calculator. A bar priced as part of a complete room is in the mid-range buildout and the full buildout.