Measuring guide
Three numbers decide whether a room takes a simulator, and the third is the one most people measure wrong. This page explains what to measure, where to measure it, and why the tool asks for it the way it does. Ten minutes with a tape measure is enough.
What to measure
Stand where the ball will be and look up. Then look along the room for anything lower — a duct, a beam, a soffit, a light fixture — and measure to the underside of the lowest thing that sits over the swing, the enclosure or the projector. That is the ceiling height. The average height of a room says nothing about whether a driver clears it; the lowest point says everything.
Carl’s Place, who make the enclosure, publish 8–9 ft as a minimum and 10 ft or more as the recommendation, and are explicit that the minimum depends on the golfer, the swing and the club.
Decide which wall the screen goes on, then measure straight back to the wall behind the hitting position. The room has to hold four things in a line: a foot of clearance behind the screen for the frame’s rear fittings, ten to twelve feet from the screen to the ball with the enclosure standing inside that distance, and four to seven feet behind the ball to swing.
Carl’s Place publishes 15 ft as the minimum total and 18–20 ft as the recommendation.
Measure across the room at the hitting position. Width decides two things: whether the enclosure frame fits between the walls, and whether the hitting position can sit in the centre. A centred position serves right- and left-handed golfers alike and needs about 14 ft. An offset position, tucked toward one wall, serves one handedness and gets a room down to 10 ft.
Both figures are Carl’s Place’s. The tool applies whichever your household needs.
The launch monitor
The launch monitor is the component that changes what the ceiling has to be. There are two ways to place it, and the enclosure manufacturer publishes an ideal room for each.
Ideal room: 9′ high × 14′ wide × 18′ deep.
The unit sits on the hitting surface beside the ball and asks nothing of the ceiling. The ceiling only has to clear the swing and the enclosure frame.
What you give up: a smaller hitting zone, and a unit that lives on the floor inside the playing area.
Ideal room: 10′ high × 14′ wide × 18′ deep.
The unit mounts to the ceiling nine to ten feet above the hitting surface and three and a half feet in front of the tee. The floor stays clear, the hitting zone is larger, and the club data runs deeper.
What you give up: a foot of ceiling, and a mount that has to be placed and levelled at installation.
Neither is the upgrade of the other. A ten-foot ceiling takes either; a nine-foot ceiling takes one. The room decides, and the tool shows both builds with your own numbers against each.
Every dimension above is the manufacturer’s. One is missing, and it is missing on purpose: no manufacturer publishes how much ceiling a particular golfer’s swing needs, because it depends on height, arm length, club length and swing plane. Carl’s Place, who make the enclosure, tell buyers to test it in the room rather than look it up.
Precision does the same. When a ceiling sits in the eight-to-ten-foot band, the tool asks for the test before it commits — and it will not call that ceiling a yes or a no until you have answered.
Take your driver into the room and make a full swing. If the clubhead clears, the room works — and you know it before anyone quotes anything.
Obstructions
A soffit at the back of the room is irrelevant. A duct over the hitting position decides the build. The tool only counts an obstruction where it sits over one of three zones — the swing, the enclosure frame, or the projector — so when you enter one, give it two numbers: how far it is from the screen wall, and the height to its underside.
Worth measuring:
Enter the three numbers, who plays, and anything hanging below the ceiling. The tool returns the two builds that fit, what each one asks of the space, and what would change the answer — with every figure named to the manufacturer that published it.