Converting a Warehouse into an Indoor Padel Centre: Height, Floor, Permits and Cost

A padel ball leaves the wall and keeps climbing. The International Padel Federation sets the minimum clear height at 6 m above the whole playing surface, measured from the finished floor to the lowest obstruction — and that includes a sprinkler branch line, a unit heater, a duct, a light fixture or a sagging purlin, not just the trusses. Agents quote eave height. What matters is the true clearance over the rectangle where the courts will sit.

Survey with a laser meter and a structural engineer, and map the height across the whole floor rather than at one spot: a building advertised at 8 m often narrows to 6.2 m under a sprinkler main, which leaves nothing for the light fittings you still have to hang. Eight metres is the recommended figure for a new indoor facility; 10 m is comfortable for a club with a show court, because the extra volume is what makes a lob feel like part of the game rather than a hazard.

The spec side of this — exact ceiling heights by level of play, lux values, ventilation rates and sound separation between courts — is set out in the indoor court requirements guide. This page assumes you have a building in front of you and need to decide whether to sign.

A court is 20 m × 10 m of playing surface, but the enclosure is bigger: the LTA guidance note publishes footprints of 20.80 m × 10.80 m for a single court, rising in 1.5 m steps between courts. Two courts need about 464 m², three about 703 m², four about 942 m² and six about 1,421 m². Those are enclosure areas only — no reception, no changing, no storage, no seating.

Work backwards from the court count you want to operate, not from the floor you can afford. Operators building in 2026 have moved towards five to nine courts, because two or three cannot absorb peak demand between 17:00 and 22:00, cannot run a league night without cancelling paid bookings, and cannot host a clinic and open play on the same evening. A four-court hall is the smallest size that reliably runs leagues, coaching and a full-day tournament under one roof.

Do the parking check in the same visit. Recreation use usually carries a higher parking ratio than the storage use the building was approved under, and that shortfall is the most common reason a good unit stalls at planning. If the lease does not include parking, get a shared-parking agreement in writing before you spend on design.

The mistake that costs the most is treating the conversion as a delivery of padel courts with some building work attached. The court frame, glass, turf and lighting are a package you can buy from one supplier; the slab, the envelope, the fire strategy and the ventilation are the building owner's scope. Sorting that boundary before you sign the lease is worth more than any discount on the court package.

Two details decide how comfortable the finished hall feels. The first is condensation: a cold steel roof over a warm, humid hall drips onto glass and turf, and wiping does not solve it — dehumidification and an insulated envelope do, budgeted before fit-out. The second is light: fixtures hung between trusses throw light down the court, while a fitting aimed across the hall produces glare players look straight into when they lift a lob. Ask for a photometric layout drawn on your actual truss spacing.

In most jurisdictions, moving a unit from storage or light industry to indoor sport is a material change of use, handled as its own application rather than as a building-works permit. In England indoor sport of this kind sits in Use Class E(d) of the 2020 use classes, and the argument councils run is not about racket sports at all: it is whether an employment site should stay in employment use. Published decisions go both ways — approvals where the unit had been vacant and the operator made an employment-land case, refusals where the authority wanted the site kept for industry. In Germany the equivalent step is a Nutzungsänderung approved by the Bauamt, with the same questions on escape routes, sanitary provision, parking and noise at the boundary.

Two practical rules. First, make the lease conditional on consent: paying rent on a unit you cannot license is the single most expensive mistake in this sector. Second, file early and file complete — a resubmission after a refusal costs a season, and pre-application advice from the planning department is cheap compared with an empty hall. The wider permitting picture, including site selection and public consultation, is covered in the planning permission guide.

Published 2026 ranges put an indoor court at £40,000–70,000 in the UK before the building, against £25,000–40,000 for an entry-level outdoor court, and roughly US$30,000–60,000 for a delivered court package. Once floor work, lighting, HVAC, fire, acoustics and front of house are allocated, an indoor conversion commonly lands at US$130,000–250,000 per court. A published four-court warehouse conversion build-up sits at US$203,000–369,000 of capex; a six-court retail-box conversion at US$300,000–540,000. The court is rarely the line that decides viability.

If the building itself needs a new envelope or a new steel shell, compare it honestly with building a dedicated hall: steel halls of this type are commonly quoted at €400–800 per m² depending on span, height and insulation, which for a 1,200 m² four-court facility is a different order of money from fitting out a unit that already stands. The padel court cost guide carries the factory-direct price build-up for the courts themselves, and the quotation route is the fastest way to replace these ranges with your own numbers.

Indoors, the court stops being a structure that has to survive weather and becomes a fitting inside a building. That changes three things. Wind load drops to internal pressure only, so the frame can be lighter and the glass is specified for impact and safety rather than storm pressure. The enclosure is bolted to a slab instead of a ring beam, so base plates, anchor pattern and slab strength decide how the court behaves after a thousand balls hit the back wall. And because the hall already has a roof, the money that would have gone into a canopy goes into lighting quality, acoustics and the show court.

For the main court, panoramic glazing without rear posts is worth the premium: it is what makes filming, streaming and sponsorship possible, and it is the court that sells memberships. Side and back courts can use standard 12 mm tempered glass with mesh above, which keeps the budget where it belongs. The steel structure specification covers frame sections, galvanising and anchor detail for an indoor build, and the court lighting system page sets out the LED fixtures, controls and the photometric report to request before the electrician quotes.

One detail gets missed in halls: the frame is anchored into a slab that may carry a waterproofing membrane, underfloor heating or a power-floated finish. Confirm the anchor type and drilling method before the frames ship — retrofitting anchors into a membrane is a repair job, not an install.

Published conversion timelines run 22–48 weeks from decision to opening. The weeks split roughly like this: four to eight to survey buildings, agree terms and instruct a designer; eight to sixteen for the change-of-use decision, running in parallel with detailed design; eight to twelve of building works and court installation; two to four for commissioning, lighting measurement, booking software and a soft opening. Court manufacture and shipping sit inside that window: a factory-direct package is typically ready to ship a few weeks after drawing approval, with four to six weeks of sea freight to Europe.

Ask for the layout drawing on your actual building, with court positions, run-off, door swing and anchor points marked, and with the lighting positions overlaid. Ask for the load data — dead load and the point loads at the anchors — so your structural engineer can confirm the slab before anything is fabricated. Ask which parts ship assembled, how the glass is packed, and what the crew needs on site: a forklift, a scissor lift, power, water, secure storage. If the answer is a catalogue page instead of your building, the supplier is selling panels, not a project.

On installation, decide early whether our crew travels or your local contractor erects under supervision. Both are routine: four courts install in roughly two to three weeks with an experienced crew, and the frame, glass and turf sequence is the same indoors as out — the difference is coordinating lifts, lights and the fire contractor in the same volume. The court systems and factory price list lists standard configurations with footprints and steel weights, and the quotation guide explains what a factory-direct offer should contain line by line.