A few of the things you have to decide when installing a Pool table at home is where you’ll install it, at what type of flooring, and should you put a rug under a pool table or not.
From what I have heard from billiard platforms online, the majority of the people prefer to keep a rug under it.
So if you have never installed a Pool table at home before, this would leave you in a dilemma. Can you put a pool table on a rug, if yes then why do you put a rug under a table? If it has some advantages, does it also entail some potential disadvantages?
If your mind is buzzing with questions, it’s going to stop at the end of this article. Because you’ll know everything about it.
The idea of placing a rug under a Pool table is derived with the idea of protecting your precious floor. Especially when it’s an expensive floor like hardwood, it offers perfection as far as leveling is concerned.
But there is a downside, your Pool table can damage it and thus, you’d have to spend your hard-earned cash on it to repair it.
But the prospect of placing a rug for some isn’t welcoming. We’ll discover why, in the later part of this article. But first, we’ll talk about the benefits of placing a rug under your Pool table.
In brief, you attain following benefits:
Possibly the biggest benefit for decor conscious people, a rug identifies your Pool area. For some, this might be a small thing but some would consider this prodigious.
The second benefit is your floor remains intact. For instance, during the game balls are likely to go off the table and hit the floor. Or an irate player can hit the floor with his/her cue sticks. In such cases, the rug will bear the brunt and your expensive floor would be protected.
If your Pool table is at your home, you wouldn’t want it to make any noise and disturb the other unconcerned people at home. The rug underneath absorbs the noise whenever a ball or multiple balls collide with each other off the table.
And probably the best bit about a rug is it makes it easier for you to make slight adjustments to the position of the table. Here too, your floor remains protected when you move the table. You can slide it without making screeching sounds or scratches on the floor.
However, it’s not always a win-win ratio. There are some downsides as well.
Before you place a rug under your Pool table, keep these disadvantages in mind:
The problem people often report when they place a rug is the table doesn’t get leveled immediately. It surely does but after a few months. In the meantime, you might experience one side slightly higher than the other, and the quality of your games can suffer.
As it goes without saying, when you are going to put a significant amount of weight over a rug, it’s not going to remain the same. For instance, once you have used a rug, you’ll realise that it has dents which will never go away. However, if your rug is only dedicated to this table, this shouldn’t bother you.
The next disadvantage is related to the decor. You must clean the rug on daily bases, especially in case a cup of coffee is spilled over it, or any other form of liquid. And inevitably your cue chalk. Because the dirtier this rug would get, the more annoying it’ll be for you.
In my opinion, if you can level up your table on a rug, then it’s worth it. Because the rest of the disadvantages can be handled if you don’t mind your rug developing those dents and you can keep it clean on a regular basis.
Chances are that you have made up your mind to use a Pool table carpet, and your next question is regarding the best size rug to keep under the pool table. There is no fixed size, but it depends on the size of your Pool table.
Generally, a rug should be big enough to cover a significant area in your room around the table, so the balls fall over it rather than on the floor.
A large Pool table rug is around 9′ x 12′ (108″ x 144″), which is a recommended size for an 8 ft Pool table.
While 7 ft pool table rug size is 8′ x 10′ (96″ x 120″).
Now, if you have made up your mind of placing a rug under your Pool table, let me tell you how it’s done.
First of all, anything that’s to do with moving the table shouldn’t be done by you but a professional. If you haven’t done it before, you can cause permanent damage to the Pool table.
Professionals do it by using drop sheets, tarps or heavy cloth underneath the table dolly to reduce this risk. They’ll use any of these to drag the table on the dolly.
You care as much about your floor as you do of your Pool table. That’s why placing a rug would be a feasible option for you to prevent any damage to your floor. But there can be a downside of this as well, which you have learnt in this article. Hopefully, now you’d have no ambiguity regarding this decision, and also, you know what size Pool table rug you need for your table.
