Pickleball Court Dimensions: Everything You Need to Set One Up

If you’re about to mark out a pickleball court in a driveway, a park, or a community hall, you need the numbers exact — not “roughly.” A net an inch low, a kitchen line a foot deep, and suddenly every serve and every dink argument has a wrong answer written into the floor.

Good news: pickleball is the smallest of the racket sports, which makes it the easiest to mark. Here are the exact official dimensions, plus a walkthrough for doing it yourself.

The non-negotiables at a glance

Equal court on both sides of the net — always 22 feet each half. Exact, every time.

Breaking the court down

Starting from the net and moving back:

The kitchen (non-volley zone) — 7 feet deep, running the full 20-foot width, on both sides. A serving ball can’t touch it. A player standing in it can’t volley. When you mark it, include the line as part of the kitchen: the kitchen line is in, and it’s the number-one source of beginner confusion.

Service boxes — from the kitchen line back to the baseline, the court splits into two 10×10-foot service boxes, divided by a center line down the middle. Serves land diagonally into these.

Baselines — the back lines, 22 feet from the net. Serves happen behind these.

Sidelines — 20 feet apart, running the full 44 feet.

Every line except the center line’s extra markings is the standard 2-inch width, and all lines are measured to their outside edge — which is the technical way of saying “a ball touching any part of the line is in.”

What you need to mark a court yourself

Court surface: 44×20 feet of flat, hard surface. Driveways, parking lots, community courts, gym floors. With four-plus centimeters of padding if you’re doing it indoors. If you don’t have 44 feet, you have a driveway version — more on that below.

Tools for a temporary court:
– Chalk or removable tape for parking-lot marking (cheap, temporary, works fine for learning).
– Water-based paint if it’s a permanent driveway court. Use a 2-inch roller to keep lines even.
– Four corner stakes + a long tape measure to get the corners square.
– A portable net that goes to 34 inches at center and 36 at the posts.

The squareness trick: measure both diagonals. A perfect rectangle has equal diagonals; if yours differ, nudge your stakes until they match. (44² + 20² = diagonal², so the diagonal is exactly 48.33 feet — measure 48 feet 4 inches corner to corner.)

The two-of-them trick for the net

Set the net height at 36 inches at the posts and 34 inches at center. The sag matters. A tight, over-taut net sits high at center, bounces judgy; a saggy net drops under 34 and every dink suddenly clears it by miles. Use the two rules: measure at the posts, then check center. Adjust the center strap slowly — tiny turns change the bounce more than you’d think.

What about a “half court” or small space?

No official half-court exists for singles — pickleball has no sanctioned singles court. But if you’re adapting:

• Smaller court (20×40): standard width, remove 2 feet from each end of the kitchen-to-baseline area for casual play. Optional, nobody’s coming to measure you at the barbecue.
• Driveway court: If you have 20 feet of width but not 44 of depth, mark a tight 36–40 foot court for drills — serve from behind whatever becomes your line. It teaches aiming, which is court dimension standard anyway.

The difference between a frozen-lake-ice game and a driveway game is mostly the surface, not the numbers.

Why these exact numbers exist

44×20 keeps it half a tennis court. The 7-foot kitchen keeps the volley zone honest. The 34-inch center net makes dinks the sport — a 40-inch net would turn every bounce into a skyball. The sport was invented in 1965* by a dad with a badminton court, a ping-pong paddle and a whiffle ball; the dimensions have aged into a regulation standard precisely because they’re small enough to fit anywhere and math-hard to get wrong.

Enjoy marking it, even the arguing-about-the-diagonal part. Every centimeter of correct line is a serve dispute you never have.

Put the measurements to use: learn pickleball rules for beginners and see how the game flows.

Need all the numbers in one place? Grab our free printable racquet sports court dimensions cheat sheet — court sizes for pickleball, padel, tennis, badminton, squash, and table tennis on one page.