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.