Room and setup
Golf simulator room size: how wide and deep it needs to be
Short answer
For width, most guides say 14 ft for a centre tee that serves right- and left-handed golfers, and 9 to 10 ft as the minimum for one golfer on an offset tee. For depth, half the guides that give a figure recommend 18 ft: about 1 ft behind the screen, 10 ft to the ball and 7 ft behind it. Launch monitors that sit behind the golfer usually need more.
On this page
About 14 ft wide and 18 ft deep is the most common recommendation in the published room guides in our data. One golfer can get by in 9 to 10 ft of width with an offset tee. The launch monitor decides how much depth you can cut.
The counts below are of general room guides from retailers and launch monitor makers, not pages written for one model. Enter your room in the Bay Sizer to check it against every source and see which launch monitors fit.
Width: centre or offset tee
Centre tee. Five of the six guides that give a centre-tee width say 14 ft: two Carl’s Place pages, two Shop Indoor Golf pages and the SkyTrak blog. Shop Indoor Golf calls 14 ft “ideal if you want your tee centered and to accommodate both right- and left-handed golfers”. TruGolf, the sixth, calls 12 ft a strong starting point and 14 to 16 ft better when right- and left-handed golfers share the room.
Offset tee. All five guides that give an offset-tee figure put the minimum at 9 to 10 ft: Carl’s Place, the SkyTrak blog and Austad’s Golf say 10 ft, and two Shop Indoor Golf pages say 9 to 10 ft. Moving the tee toward one wall keeps the swing off the walls; the launch monitor and software are set to match. It works for one golfer. A left-handed golfer needs the tee on the other side, or a centre tee.
Four more guides give a width without saying where the tee goes, from a 3 m (about 9 ft 10 in) minimum at GolfBays to Shop Indoor Golf’s 12 ft minimum and 15 ft recommendation.
Some launch monitor makers ask for more. Trackman calls 15 ft a “strong benchmark” for a centre tee with its iO and Trackman 4, and points narrower rooms to the iO Duo. Uneekor wants at least 13 ft for its overhead units, and 15 ft for golfers 6 ft or taller. Carl’s Place allows about 7 ft of swing space around the golfer for most launch monitors, and 9 ft for the Garmin Approach R50 and Rapsodo MLM2PRO.
Several units that sit beside the ball, including the R50, both Square Golf models and the Uneekor EYE MINI, have to move to the other side of the ball for left-handed golfers. For an enclosure, Carl’s Place says to subtract 4 to 6 in from the room’s width, and does not recommend enclosures narrower than 100 in.
Depth: the four parts
Depth adds up from the screen wall back.
1. Behind the screen. The impact screen needs a gap so the ball does not hit the wall. Published figures run from about 1 ft to 2 ft: 12 to 16 in at Carl’s Place and Shop Indoor Golf, 1.5 ft in another Shop Indoor Golf guide, about 400 mm at Foresight Sports Europe and about 2 ft at SkyTrak.
2. Ball to screen. Eight general guides discuss this distance. Six give a recommended figure, and all six say about 10 ft, most of them 10 to 12 ft. Carl’s Place: “Please do not stand closer than 10 feet from the screen.” Shop Indoor Golf warns that cutting depth too far “can increase the risk of ball ricochet and impact screen bounce-back”. For its overhead units, Uneekor asks for 12 ft, with 10 ft a minimum that “may suffice”.
3. Behind the ball. Three of the four guides that give a figure say 7 ft behind the ball for the golfer. Carl’s Place allows 4 ft in a minimum room, and TruGolf gives 5 to 6 ft in its summary and 6 to 8 ft in its body text.
4. The launch monitor, if it sits behind you. Units beside the ball or on the ceiling take no floor space here. Units on the floor behind the golfer do.
Put together, 1 ft plus 10 ft plus 7 ft makes 18 ft. Of the 12 general guides that give a recommended depth, 6 say 18 ft and 2 more say 16 ft. Of the 6 that give a minimum, 3 say 15 ft and 3 say 12 ft.
Launch monitors behind the golfer
A launch monitor on the floor behind you comes with two figures of its own: how far behind the ball it goes, and how much ball flight it needs. The R10 and Full Swing KIT are radar units, the Mevo Gen2 and Trackman 4 combine radar with a camera, and Rapsodo names cameras for the MLM2PRO without confirming radar. The behind-the-ball figure replaces parts 3 and 4. The ball-to-screen figure is the maker’s minimum; most general guides still recommend about 10 ft.
| Launch monitor | Unit behind the ball | Ball to screen |
|---|---|---|
| Garmin Approach R10 | 6′ | 8′ |
| Rapsodo MLM2PRO | 6′6″ | 8′ |
| FlightScope Mevo Gen2 | 8′ | 8′ |
| Full Swing KIT | 8′ | 8′ |
| Trackman 4 | 6′ | 10′ |
Add the screen gap and room for the unit itself. Neither Garmin’s manual nor Trackman’s room requirements give a total room depth.
The guides that split depth by type agree that radar needs more. Shop Indoor Golf’s table gives 16 to 19 ft for radar behind the golfer and 15 to 16 ft for camera units. GolfBays gives 5 m (16.4 ft) for radar and 4 m (13.1 ft) for camera systems. See launch monitors for small rooms for the models that need the least space.
Where the guides disagree
- Shop Indoor Golf’s room-size page gives a 15 ft minimum depth in its table and 12 ft in its text.
- SkyTrak’s Knowledge Base gives a 12 ft minimum depth, while its FAQ recommends 10 ft deep for indoor use.
- Trackman’s blog gives the Trackman 4 18 ft or more from screen to unit, while its support page’s minimums add up to 16 ft.
For height, see our ceiling height guide, then check your numbers in the Bay Sizer.