So, you love to shoot pool! You started out learning how to play pool for beginners, and you’ve spent years dreaming about how to play pool like a pro. Now you have your own home, and you’re ready to set up your own minature pool hall right in your basement!
You’ve spent quality time designing your pool room. You’ve chosen something spectacular from a wide variety of pool table lights that will complement the theme of your design. And you’ve laid out a floor plan and chosen a nice spacious area for your pool table to sit. From personal taste, I’ll tell you that the smallest comfortable area to put a 9’ table in is about 15’ x 20’. You can go a bit smaller and still have some tiny bit of clearance for standard length cue sticks, but you’ll steel feel mighty cramped, especially if you wind up trying to shoot right from the rail.
The next step is going to be hanging one of those fabulous pool table lights you selected earlier.
Now hopefully you’ve made sure that there is some sort of support available in the ceiling directly over your pool table. Usually a couple of cross running studs will do just nicely, other times you may have only a center-beam running length-wise above your table. Make darn sure, before everything is settled permanently into place, that you can actually get the pool table light centered directly over the table, otherwise you’re going to be scrambling to make some sort of mickey-mouse support for the light to hang from, and you really don’t want that added headache.
One good way to gauge how to center pool table lights is to hang a plumb-line down over the table from the ceiling support, from each place you want to put an anchor. Most self-installation-style lights you buy are designed to hang from two support hooks anchored into studs or beams in your ceiling.
So:
- Measure out the distance you’ll need between hooks and mark the locations.
- Then hang your plumb-line from your marks and move it around until you find the center-most point over the table for both hooks. Now mark those spots as well.
This is where people discover whether or not they can actually get their pool table lights centered properly over the pool table’s current location. If you can’t find acceptable places to plant your support hooks, you’re going to either have to get creative and build in the support you need, or you might, possibly, be able to adjust the placement of the pool table itself to help center everything.
Once you’ve marked your anchor-spots:
- Drill holes with a power drill for your support hooks and then screw the support hooks tightly into place.
- Using your tape measure, measure up from the table-top: 40 inches. This is where you want the bottom edge of your light fixture to come to rest.
- Adjust the lamp chains to allow the light to hang at the measure height, and then attach them to the hooks
- Before you replace any ceiling tiles, determine how you’re going to run power to your new pool table lights. With a little creativity you can get the power cord hidden above the ceiling tiles, or run discreetly along the studs or beams to an outlet.
- Plug in your light!
Now you’re ready to add the finishing touches to your new game room and invite your buddies over for an awesome night of playing pool. With a little luck you’ll give them some billiard lessons they’ll never forget!
Follow this link if you’d like some basic advice on how to select table lights.
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