Perfect Finishing Touches on Your Billiard Room

When deciding what finishing touches to choose for your home pool room and recreation area, your first step is to locate the focal point of the room. In almost all cases, your pool table will be your focal point, as it is not only the largest piece of furniture in the room, but also where many will be focusing their attention while attending. If your wall color and floor choice do not already match or complement your pool table, then take care of that first. Then you can start selecting smaller decor items to tend to those important finishing touches. Wall hangings, hanging lamps, and smaller billiard room furniture pieces can be found almost anywhere, including retail sporting goods stores, home decorating or department stores, specialty stores, and via the internet.

Once you have established how much space you have to work with, begin by thinking about your walls and other "free" space. Free space refers to the areas such as walls or open air space (billiard lamps, bar lights, etc.) that does not use up any extra floor space. Some decor options for free space include various posters, team pennants, neon signs, etched emblem mirrors, a neon or felt clock, a dart cabinet, sports memorabilia, and more. A stained glass pool table light adds class and style to any home billiard room, and be sure to also include a solid, wall cue rack, preferably one that is made of wood and matches the wood color and grain of your billiard table. Again, even though a cue rack is a necessity in a billiard room, going with one that hangs on the wall will save valuable floor space and leave more room for activities.

If your pool room happens to be small and is not suited for larger billiard room furniture, perhaps some scattered bar stools and possibly a pub table off to the side would be best. Bar stools are great for billiard and game rooms. Due to their nature, they naturally "go with the flow" of billiards and are built to get on and off of quickly. Bar stools containing your favorite sports team logo provide great finishing touches to a sports based theme. If you do happen to have space for larger billiard room furniture, then match your upholstery colors and decor styles to go with the rest of your pool room, again keeping the billiard table as the focal point. This also applies to any supplemental gaming tables you are considering. Some alternative billiard room games include a poker, foosball, or air hockey table, pinball machine, or shuffleboard table.

You can go even further and add more features to your billiard room, turning it into a multi-purpose game room and activity area. Examples include:

• Building a small or full-sized bar
• Including a pub table with some bar stools in the corner for separate conversation
• Adding a satellite or cable television system
• Adding a sound system, satellite radio, and/or karaoke machine
• Adding complementary games, such as darts, poker, foosball, video game coffin, etc.

Utilizing more complementary games for your billiard room will help shape it into the focal point of your whole house, providing an atmosphere that everyone can enjoy. It will also provide your billiard room patrons more options if they are not participating in a game of pool.

Once you have begun, you will see that decorating the perfect billiard room may be a fluid, ongoing process, since people sporadically change their minds with the weather. Just remember, since it is your billiard room, decorate to please yourself. Feel free to take suggestions, but ultimately make yourself happy with decor that you prefer. And above all else, have fun, and you will be extremely happy with what you can accomplish.

Tips to Decorating Your Game Room

When you bought your house, you probably knew right away which room was going to be the game room. But that was when the room was empty! Now you may be wondering exactly how you go about decorating this room to make it fun but not cluttered. You do not have to be overwhelmed by this task. In fact, there are many options available now to make your game room the favorite place in the house!

The first thing to do when planning your game room is to decide on a theme. If you have a favorite team, you may want to center your room on that theme. Or you may just want to plan a room based on a certain sport. You can also choose a generic game theme, focusing on different games that your family loves to play. The best thing about decorating a game room is that you can make it as fun and quirky as you want!

Once you decide on a theme, you may want to choose accessories that will accent that theme. If your room is centered on football, you can add oval rugs to the room that look like footballs. There are also lamps and wall hangings that can accent the theme. If you want a room that is centered on the pool table, you can accessorize with billiard balls around the room. Black rugs may work best with this theme.

While you are decorating your game room, you may also want to look at the furniture you are placing in there. If you are going to be spending a lot of time watching sports on television, then you may want to look at couches and recliners that will make the room a comfortable place to spend time. If your game room is simply going to be a place to play games, then you may want to have chairs and tables set up to make game playing easier to do. The furniture you add to your game room will determine how often people want to hang out in there.

Finally, when you are decorating your room, you are definitely going to want to consider what games to put in there. If you have a pool table, you may not have much room for anything else. This may also be a good place to put your board games and video games, but that is up to you. Every room has a different purpose, so you need to make yours fit your needs.

Game rooms are meant to be a fun gathering place in your home. This is the best room in the house to have fun with the decor and add a little of everyone's decorating tastes. The most important thing in decorating this room is to not to go crazy with decorating it. Keep the decorating to a minimum and focus on your theme.