When you are creating a game room in your home, it's always a good idea to make sure it will be comfortable to play. A game of foosball or air hockey will be much less enjoyable if the players are jammed up against a wall.

Billiards tables are particularly troublesome in cramped areas, since you'll need to account for the length of the cues as well. Unless you want to try the "Seinfeld" strategy of playing with a conductor's baton, you'll need to leave adequate room for players to get around the table and line up a shot.

There are several areas in your home that could hold a pool table. Homeowners have set them up in areas such as garages, basements, attics, and even recessed areas of large rooms.

You may want to consider a few different locations before settling on one. Since they are large and bulky, pool tables can be difficult to maneuver around corners and up staircases. Karen Egly-Thompson, writing for the home design site Houzz, says companies that sell pool tables will often be able to visit your home to see if it is feasible to place the table in your preferred location.

Pool tables come in several sizes, so you can decide which ones might work best in the space available. "Pub size" tables are about seven feet long, while those used in tournaments are about nine feet long. Pool tables with an eight-foot length are also available.

The room not only needs to have space for the pool table, it also needs to have enough clearance for players to use the cues. Robbies Billiards, a Maryland game room retailer, offers a mathematical formula for determining the proper size for the room: the length of the pool table, plus two times the length of the cue, for one side of the room, and the width of the pool table, plus two times the length of the cue, for the other.

Pool cues are usually 58 inches long, and Egly-Thompson says only three inches are required for the backstroke on a shot. As such, allowing a little more than five feet of clearance from all edges of the table should be sufficient.

Some rooms, particularly basements, might have load-bearing columns that could interfere with play. Robbies Billiards recommends placing the table so that the column is to the side of the table, behind a side pocket. You'll rarely need to make shots from this area, so the column will be less of an obstacle with this placement.

If space is more limited, you can easily make a pool table work in a smaller room by getting shorter cues and shrinking the size of the table. Brunswick Billiards, a pool table manufacturer in Bristol, Wisconsin, recommends an 18-by-14 foot room for a nine-foot pool table with a 58-inch cue. With the setup of a seven-foot table and a 48-inch cue, a 14.5-by-11.5 foot room will suffice.

Robbies Billiards suggests that the cue should not be shorter than 48 inches. However, the company also says players can use "shorty cues," which are as short as 36 inches and weighted to feel longer.

The room should have space to keep the necessary accessories for the pool table. Egly-Thompson says a recessed space in the wall will allow you to keep cues, balls, the triangle, and other materials handy without protruding into the playing surface.

If you plan to use a wall-mounted holder instead, make sure it is kept far enough away from the table that it won't interfere with play. Many tables also offer options for storing materials on the table itself.

When space is particularly limited, you can look for a pool table that does double duty as a dining room table. These models have removable leaves, which can be put in place for a meal or removed when you feel like a game of eight ball.