How to set up a dartboard in a garage

The measurements are standard, so use them

There is no need to work out where a dartboard goes. The measurements are the same in every pub and every league, and the whole point of using them at home is that your throw transfers: practise at the right height and distance and you are practising the real game. The centre of the bullseye sits 1.73 metres above the floor. The throw line, the oche, is 2.37 metres from the face of the board — the face, not the wall, which matters once the board is on a bracket or in a cabinet and sits proud of the wall.

The third figure is the one that catches the mistake. Measure diagonally from the centre of the bull to the near edge of the oche and it should read 2.93 metres. If the height and the distance are both right, the diagonal is right. If the diagonal is out, one of the other two is wrong, and the diagonal will tell you before your first game does. A tape hooked on the bull and run down to the line is a ten-second check.

Measure from the floor you will actually stand on. A garage slab is rarely level, and a tiled floor or a mat laid after the board goes up raises the floor and lowers the effective height of the bull. Lay the floor first, or measure from the finished floor height if the tiles are still in the box. Then check the slab for a fall towards the door, because a board that is right at the oche is not necessarily right at the wall.

Which wall the board goes on in a garage

In a house the board goes wherever there is a spare wall. In a garage the throw line decides for you. Put the board on a long side wall and the oche lands across the middle of the floor, which is exactly where the car parks and where everything else passes through. So the board wants an end wall — and not the end with the up-and-over door, which swings inward, takes the top of the wall with it, and puts the thrower with their back to the street.

That leaves the far end wall, opposite the door. It is the best wall in most garages anyway: furthest from the draught, furthest from the road, and the natural place for the social end of the room. A board there sends the throw straight down the length of the garage, which is the one direction a single garage has plenty of. If the far wall is taken by a window, the board goes beside it rather than across it.

Then look behind the oche. A thrower needs to step up to the line and step back from it, and the others need somewhere to stand that is out of the line of the throw and out of the way of a bounce-out. Call it a couple of paces behind the line kept clear, and nothing sharp at head height. A shelf at the end of a throw is a sure way to lose a flight and the mood.

What a bristle board does to the wall behind it

Every dart that misses a steel-tip board goes into whatever surrounds it. On a plastered wall that is a hole. On bare brick the point skids off the face and digs into the mortar joint, and a season of missed doubles leaves the pointing looking chewed. Blockwork is softer still. None of this is a reason not to have a bristle board in a garage — it is the reason a surround exists.

A surround is a ring of dense foam or rubber that sits around the board and catches the misses, and a cabinet does the same job with doors that close over it. A cheaper answer is a backboard: a sheet of cork, softboard or plywood fixed to the wall behind the board, taking the hits instead of the brick. Which you choose is mostly about how the room looks; all three protect the wall and, just as usefully, the dart points.

A soft-tip electronic board changes the sum. Plastic points into a segmented face do not mark the wall the way a stray steel dart does, so the surround becomes a choice rather than a necessity. The board in our range is a soft-tip electronic one with an LCD scoreboard and six darts included, and part of the reason it suits a converted garage is exactly that: the wall behind it stays a wall.

Fixing it so it stays where you measured

A bristle board is heavier than it looks, and it hangs on one screw through a bracket, so the fixing takes the whole load plus the thump of every dart. Into solid brick or concrete that is a plug and a screw in a drilled hole, sized to the bracket. Into lightweight block use a fixing made for it rather than a standard plug. Into plasterboard, find a stud or fix a batten first; a board that pulls out mid-game takes a lump of wall with it.

Most boards come with a bracket that screws to the wall and a hook or a stud on the back of the board, plus small feet that stop it rotating. Fit the bracket to the wall, hang the board, then check the bull with a tape before you tighten anything. The number 20 goes at the top. And take a bristle board off and turn it every few weeks: rotating the numbers ring spreads the wear off the treble 20, which is where a bristle board dies first.

1. 1Mark the bullMeasure 1.73m up the wall from the finished floor and mark it. That mark is the centre of the bullseye, not the top of the board.
2. 2Fit the bracketOffset the bracket from the bull mark by the distance from the hanger on the back of the board to its centre. Drill for the wall you have, not for the plug in the box.
3. 3Hang and levelHang the board, set the 20 at the top and check the bull is on the mark. Fit the feet so it sits flat and does not spin.
4. 4Mark the ocheMeasure 2.37m out from the face of the board along the floor, then check the diagonal from the bull to that line reads 2.93m. Tape it, or fit a raised oche.

The floor, the light and the line

Light the board from in front and above, so the thrower does not stand in their own shadow. A single ceiling light behind the oche puts a shadow across the board every time someone steps up; a small light above the board, or one either side, angled at the face, fixes it. It does not need to be bright, it needs to be in the right place, and a plug-in fitting will prove the point before anything is wired.

A bare concrete floor is hard on darts. A bounce-out onto the slab blunts a steel point and snaps a plastic one, and a flight that lands on grit comes back frayed. A mat under the board and along the throw is the usual answer, and an interlocking tile floor does the same job for the whole garage while covering a dusty slab. Either way, lay it before you measure the bull height, not after.

The oche itself can be a strip of tape, a raised timber bar, or the printed line on a darts mat. Tape wears and a bar gets kicked, so if it is a long-term fixture, a raised oche screwed down is the one that stays where it was measured. Whatever it is, the toe stays behind it, and the people waiting stay behind the thrower rather than beside the board.