Badminton Court Dimensions: Every Measurement, From the BWF Laws

The measurements

Measurement	Figure
Length	13.400 m
Width, doubles	6.100 m
Width, singles	5.180 m
Diagonal, full court	14.723 m
Short service line, from net	1.980 m
Doubles long service line, from back boundary	0.76 m
Half-court width, each side of the centre line	2.530 m
Side alley width (singles line to doubles line)	0.46 m
Line width	40 mm
Net height at centre	1.524 m
Net height at doubles side lines	1.55 m
Post height	1.55 m

The length never changes

This is the detail most people get wrong, and it is easy to see why: the phrase “singles court” suggests a smaller court.

It is not shorter. It is only narrower.

Both formats play the full 13.4 m length. Singles uses the inner side lines, giving 5.18 m of width instead of 6.1 m — a difference of 0.46 m on each side, the two side alleys.

The BWF states the point directly in its note under Diagram A: the court as drawn can be used for both singles and doubles play. One set of markings, two games.

Where the service courts differ, and it reverses

Singles is narrower but deeper. Doubles is wider but shallower.

In doubles, the service court is cut short at the back by the doubles long service line, set 0.76 m inside the back boundary. In singles, the service court runs all the way to the back boundary.

So a doubles serve must land in a wider but shorter box, and a singles serve in a narrower but longer one. Neither format has the larger service court outright — they trade one dimension for the other, which is why players moving between the two misjudge the back of the service court more often than the sides.

Both use the same short service line, 1.98 m from the net.

The net is wider than the singles court

Law 1.9 is unambiguous, and its consequence is odd: the posts are placed on the doubles side lines regardless of whether singles or doubles is being played.

In singles, then, the net runs past both side lines being used. The court narrows; the net does not.

There is a second consequence for net height. The Laws specify 1.524 m at the centre and 1.55 m over the doubles side lines — so the height at the singles side line is neither figure, but a point on the sag between them. The net is not level, and the specification only pins its two ends and its middle.

The net itself is 760 mm deep, at least 6.1 m wide, with a mesh between 15 mm and 20 mm, topped by a 75 mm white tape doubled over the cord.

Lines are 40 mm, and they count as in

All court lines are 40 mm wide, and the Laws state that all lines form part of the area they define.

That second clause decides line calls. A shuttle landing on any part of a boundary line is in, because the line belongs to the court it bounds. There is no shared or neutral line.

The 40 mm also matters when marking a court out. Published segment measurements are taken between line edges rather than centres, which is why quoted figures for the same distance sometimes differ by 40 mm depending on the source.

Checking a court is actually square

The BWF publishes the diagonal for a reason: 14.723 m.

Measuring the length and width tells you nothing about whether the corners are right angles — a parallelogram can have perfectly correct sides. The diagonal is the check that closes it.

It is also a neat confirmation that the published dimensions are exact rather than rounded. For a 13.4 m by 6.1 m rectangle:

√(13.4² + 6.1²) = 14.723 m

The figure the BWF prints and the figure the dimensions imply agree to the millimetre. Every segment on Diagram A likewise sums to the stated totals — 13,400 mm along the length and 6,100 mm across the width — which is how the numbers on this page were verified before publishing.

The equipment specifications, while we are here

The same Laws fix the shuttle and racket precisely.

Shuttle: 16 feathers; feather length 62–70 mm; feather tips lying on a circle of 58–68 mm diameter; base 25–28 mm across; total weight 4.74–5.50 g.

Racket: frame not exceeding 680 mm in overall length and 230 mm in overall width.

Shuttle speed test: hit with a full underhand stroke from over the back boundary line, parallel to the side lines, a correct shuttle lands not less than 530 mm and not more than 990 mm short of the far back boundary line. That is the sport’s way of standardising equipment against altitude and humidity, which change how a shuttle flies.

For what happens once the shuttle is in play, see badminton service rules, and for how another racket sport specifies its court and scoring, tennis rules and scoring. More measured-rulebook coverage is in rules and techniques.