Grass, sand, a sports hall floor or packed dirt. Anywhere flat with room to move around the net. The regulation court is a circle 8.5 m out from the net in every direction, about 17 m across, and your garden is almost certainly smaller than that. It does not matter.
The surface changes the game more than the space does. That is the part worth knowing before you decide where the net goes.
Written by Jakub Popluhar, roundnet coach since 2019, 1,000+ coaching hours, former national coach of Belgium.
The IRF rules draw three circles around the net, and all three are measured from the centre of the court:
"So I need a 17 metre circle in my garden, Jakub?" No. You need a court that size to play a sanctioned match. To play, you need enough room that nobody runs into a fence.
Six to eight metres in every direction is plenty for people who are starting, because beginners do not yet hit the ball far enough to use a real court. The space requirement grows with your standard. That is a nice problem to have, and it is months away.
Sand. The most forgiving surface there is, and one of the two main tournament surfaces. You can dive without thinking about it, which is exactly what a beginner needs, because the fear of the ground is what stops people reaching for balls. The catch is the legs sinking unevenly and tilting the rim. Stamp it flat, then set up.
Grass. The other tournament standard and the most common garden surface. Fast, true, kind to knees when it is soft, less kind when the summer has baked it. If the ground is hard, people stop diving, and the game quietly gets worse without anyone noticing why.
Sports hall. How most of Europe plays from November onward. The floor is perfect. What limits you is the ceiling, because serves and defensive touches go high, and a low hall changes which shots are even possible.
Packed dirt or gravel. Playable. Nobody dives twice.
Concrete and asphalt. This is the one I would avoid. The set stands fine and the ball behaves normally, so it looks like a good option, and then somebody goes to ground after a ball and takes the skin off a forearm. Diving is not an advanced move you can put off learning, it arrives in the first month. Give people a surface that allows it.
Not the net. It sits on small legs, it weighs almost nothing, and it never moves during a point. The wear comes from feet, and it appears as a ring a couple of metres out where four people spend an hour changing direction.
Move the set two metres the next time you play. That is the entire solution, and the grass you used last week gets its fortnight off.
Wind matters here more than in most sports, and the reason is in the equipment: the ball weighs 85 g. Serves and defensive touches go high, and anything that goes high is at the mercy of a gust. Outdoor tournaments deal with this by playing through it and nobody enjoys it much.
In a real blow, the empty set can also slide on hard ground between points. Weight the legs with a bag, or take the honest option: treat the wind as a fourth player, stop counting, and play for the rallies.
On sand, barefoot. That is what everybody does and there is nothing to think about.
On grass and indoors, any shoe with grip. There is no roundnet shoe and you do not need to buy anything. If you already own court shoes from squash, handball, badminton or indoor football, use those, because this game is sideways movement and hard stops rather than running, and a running shoe is built for the one thing you will barely do.
A regulation court is a circle 8.5 m out from the net, roughly 17 m across. To simply play, six to eight metres in each direction is comfortable, and beginners use much less than that.
Sand and grass are the tournament standards. Sports halls are the winter default. Avoid concrete, not because the ball misbehaves but because diving arrives early and concrete does not forgive it.
Yes. The rules cover it and allow tape instead of drawn lines. Ceiling height is the real constraint, not the floor.
The net will not. Feet will, in a ring a couple of metres out. Move the set two metres next time and it recovers.
No. Barefoot on sand, any grippy court shoe elsewhere. Lateral support beats cushioning, because the game is sideways.
The best one. Diving costs nothing, so people reach for balls they would let go on grass, and reaching is how you get better. Just flatten the sand so the legs sink evenly.
Pick the softest ground you have access to and put the net there. Everything else on this page is a detail next to that one decision.