Badminton Court Dimensions & Setup Guide

Whether you're marking out a driveway for a family game or fitting out a proper club hall, getting the court dimensions and net right isn't just about being "official" — the width of the court and the height of the net directly change how a shuttle needs to be hit to stay in play. This guide covers the full official dimensions, the net, the service lines that matter most, and practical advice for setting up a court yourself.

Full court dimensions

A regulation badminton court is a rectangle 13.4 metres long, and its width depends on whether you're marking it out for singles or doubles.

For doubles, the full width is 6.1 metres, using the outermost pair of sidelines on each side of the court. For singles, the court is narrower: it uses the same 13.4 m length but only 5.18 metres of width, measured to the inner sidelines rather than the outer ones. In practice this means a doubles court has an extra strip — about 0.46 m on each side — that's in play for doubles but out of bounds for singles, which is why singles and doubles lines are drawn as two different rectangles sharing the same court.

That length-versus-width relationship matters tactically as much as it does for line-calling: singles rallies tend to run longer along the court's length because the narrower width makes it harder to hit a shuttle out wide for a winner, while doubles rallies exploit the extra width to open up gaps between two defenders.

The full court, including both the doubles and singles boundary lines, is typically painted onto a rectangular playing surface with roughly 1.5 or more metres of clear run-off space beyond every boundary line, so players have room to lunge, recover, and retrieve a shuttle without immediately hitting a wall or barrier.

The net

The net divides the court exactly in half along its width and is strung between two posts positioned on the doubles sidelines (even when the match being played is singles). Net height is 1.55 metres at the posts, and the net is designed to sag very slightly toward the middle, down to 1.524 metres at the centre, where a taut strap or band pulls it down to that exact height.

That small dip in the middle isn't a manufacturing tolerance — it's the intended, official specification, and it matters because it changes how a shuttle needs to clear the net depending on where across the court it's travelling. A shot hit down the centre of the court has a very slightly lower net to clear than one hit near the sideline, which is a small but real factor in how tight players can play a net shot near the middle versus the edges.

Net posts should sit exactly on the doubles sidelines regardless of whether singles or doubles is being played, and the net itself needs to be pulled taut enough that it doesn't visibly bow forward or backward under its own weight — a loose or sagging net changes the effective height across its middle far more than the official 26 mm difference between post and centre height.

Service courts & lines

Serving in badminton happens diagonally, from one service court into the corresponding diagonal service court on the opponent's side, and the lines that bound those service courts differ for singles and doubles in a way that trips a lot of new players up.

The short service line sits close to the net on both sides — a serve that doesn't clear it is a fault, regardless of format. The back boundary for a legal serve differs by format: in singles, serves must land within the full back boundary line (the outer, longer-court line), while in doubles, serves must land short of a separate, closer doubles long service line, since a serve landing deep in the back tramlines would otherwise be very hard for the receiving pair to attack.

Side-to-side, it's essentially the reverse: singles service courts use the inner sidelines (the narrower singles width), while doubles service courts use the full outer sidelines. This combination — singles serves land shorter but wider, doubles serves land narrower but can go deeper — is exactly why the same physical set of lines on a shared court supports both formats without needing to be repainted.

Setting up at home or a club

For a home or driveway setup, you rarely need to hit official dimensions exactly — what matters most is having enough clear length (aim for at least the 13.4 m court plus a metre or two of run-off at each end) and a net at the correct height, since net height affects shot trajectory far more than a few centimetres of missing sideline width. Portable net and post sets designed for driveways and gardens typically come pre-set to the 1.55 m / 1.524 m specification, so as long as the ground is level, you're close to a regulation feel even without painted lines.

For a club or hall setup, precision matters more, since players will notice — and dispute — line calls that don't match the official geometry. Use a long tape measure and mark corners first, then run string lines between them before painting, checking the diagonal measurements match (a true 13.4 m by 6.1 m rectangle has equal diagonals) to catch any marking-out error before it becomes a permanent line on the floor. It's also worth checking net height at both the posts and the centre after tensioning, since a net that's correctly set at the posts can still sag below 1.524 m at the centre if the strap isn't pulled tight enough.

Once your court is set up correctly, the next things worth getting right are your racket setup — see our string tension guide — and the scoring itself, covered in our guide to badminton scoring rules.