Layout Guide: A Mixed Pickleball and Badminton Hall

A pickleball court is 20 × 44 ft, which is 6.10 × 13.41 m (2026 USA Pickleball rulebook, rule 3.A.1). A badminton doubles court is 6.1 × 13.4 m (BWF Laws, Diagram A; the Laws' stated diagonal of 14.723 m checks out against those sides). The two courts are the same size to within half an inch.

That makes them natural partners. A hall laid out for one can take the other, and you can change the mix by season, by day or by hour as demand shifts. What doesn't transfer is the equipment and, critically, the height.

The useful result: a grid of 30 × 60 ft pickleball surfaces meets every club-level badminton run-off. Sideline to wall is 1.52 m against 1.5 m; back line to wall 2.44 m against 2.0 m; and courts are 3.05 m apart against 1.5 m. The reverse isn't true: a hall spaced for badminton, with courts 1.5 m (about 5 ft) apart, leaves pickleball players far less room than the rulebook surfaces imply. So lay a mixed hall out on pickleball spacing.

If courts are end to end, Sport England wants a division curtain between rows, with 1.5 m from each back line to the curtain. Two 30 × 60 ft surfaces end to end put the back lines 16 ft (4.88 m) apart, room for the curtain and both run-offs.

The posts are in different places and at very different heights, so one set can't do both sports. A mixed hall needs two sets of nets and somewhere to store whichever set isn't in use. Plan that storage room on the floor plan; nets for a whole hall take more space than people expect.

Ceiling height is what decides which sports a hall can honestly offer.

So a typical 18–24 ft flex building can be a pickleball club with occasional recreational badminton, while a building with 24.6 ft or more clear can be a genuine club for both. Details are in what ceiling height you need.

Each sport's rules ask for its own lines: pickleball lines are 2 in wide, all the same colour, contrasting with the surface (rule 3.A.4.e); badminton lines are 40 mm wide (Law 1.1), and Sport England asks for matt white. The interior lines (pickleball's non-volley zone 7 ft from the net; badminton's service lines) fall in different places.

The simplest approach is two full sets of lines in two colours: decide which sport is primary and give it the strongest contrast, then paint the second sport in a colour that players of the first can ignore. Ask your surfacing contractor about colours that work on your floor.

Two templates are close to a mixed hall. The Badminton Hall (4 Courts) template is a 121 × 75 ft hall with a 30 ft ceiling, tall enough for both sports. The Pickleball Courts (4) template shows the same 2 × 2 block with pickleball run-off. Open both, compare how the courts and margins sit, and draw your own building with the larger of the two footprints.