Layout Guide: A 4-Court Pickleball Club

Four courts is a small club: big enough for leagues and open play, small enough for a modest building. The courts alone take a fixed amount of floor, set by the playing surface you choose (2026 USA Pickleball rulebook, rule 3.A.3).

Then add everything that isn't a court. Published multi-court buildings have run about 2,450 to 3,900 gross sq ft per court (2023–2026 projects; see how many courts fit). Applied to four courts that's roughly 9,800–15,600 sq ft, but those ratios come from buildings of 8–17 courts, and a small club can't shrink its lobby and restrooms in proportion. Plan the support spaces by drawing them, not by ratio.

The support spaces are where small clubs feel cramped. A practical order to lay them out, from the door in:

• Entrance and front desk. Put the desk where everyone passes it and where staff can see the courts. If you plan key-code entry with no staff (one Des Moines club runs this way, Business Record, February 2024), you still need a clear check-in point.
• Waiting area. Benches or seats along the courts' long side, outside the playing surfaces. Players waiting for the next game are a big share of the people in the building.
• Restrooms. The number depends on your code's occupancy count; a warehouse conversion usually needs more than the building has (LaBella, March 2025).
• Pro shop or retail wall. Paddles, balls, grips. A wall of shelving near the desk is often enough at this size.
• Storage. Spare nets, ball machines, cleaning kit.

In the 2 × 2 block at 34 × 64 ft, a strip of 20–30 ft along one long side (128 ft) gives roughly 2,560–3,840 sq ft for all of this, which would make a building of about 88–98 × 128 ft. That's our worked example, not a standard; draw yours.

Divider nets aren't required by the rulebook, but they stop balls rolling into the next game, which keeps play safe and moving. In a 2 × 2 block, a net down the middle of the long side and another across the middle separate all four courts.

Worked example: if the nets were 10 ft high, the two dividers in a 2 × 2 block of 34 × 64 ft surfaces would be 128 ft + 68 ft = 196 ft long, or 1,960 sq ft of net. At the published ranges that's about $590–$2,940 in plain netting or $9,390–$10,190 in curtain fabric at list price, before hardware and installation. The 10 ft height is an assumption for the arithmetic.

With surfaces edge to edge, a 2 × 2 block has no room inside it for a column: every point is inside some court's playing surface. So columns have to fall outside the block, or you open the block up.

• Around the block. Columns in the lobby strip or along the walls are fine.
• In an aisle. Separate the two rows with an aisle wide enough for the column line. With a 40 ft grid and 34 ft surfaces, each surface fits inside a bay with 3 ft to spare each side, as in Grid A on the courts-fit page.
• Never in a playing surface. The rulebook counts posts and walls as permanent objects; a ball that hits one ends the point, and a player running wide can hit it too.

The fastest check is to draw the building with its pillars at the measured spacing, then drag the four courts until no pillar sits on a blue surface.

For indoor pickleball, lighting vendors cite the USA Pickleball / ASBA manual (2023) for about 30 foot-candles (about 323 lux) for recreational play and 50 foot-candles (about 538 lux) for club or competitive play. We couldn't confirm those figures in the manual or in IES RP-6, which reportedly added pickleball recently.

Prices published in 2026: one guide puts an installed LED retrofit at about $8,000–$15,000 per court; retail indoor kits ran $3,209.87 for four 240 W fixtures sold as a "32 fc" package and $5,719.87 for four 480 W fixtures sold as "60 fc" (fixtures only, no installation). Those are vendor numbers; get a lighting plan for your actual ceiling height.

Light fittings count as permanent objects under the rulebook, so hang them high and, where you can, over the run-off between courts rather than directly above play.

The closest ready-made plan is the Pickleball Courts (4) template: four courts in a 2 × 2 block, each with its own run-off, on a 133 × 83 ft fenced lot with benches for players waiting their turn. It's set up outdoors (the walls stand in for a fence), so to use it as an indoor club, resize the outline to your building, add pillars where your columns are, and draw the lobby and restrooms along one side.

Court sizes for every sport in the app are in sports court dimensions with run-off. For other building sizes, the court layout calculator gives the count first.