Dartboard Height, Distance & Diagonal
Height and throw distance get printed everywhere. The diagonal between them almost never does, which is why so many home boards pass both checks separately and are still wrong. Pick your code for the three figures to mark, then put your own tape readings in and see which of the two measurements is carrying the error.
Steel-tip — the three numbers to mark
Bull centre height
172.7 cm
5 ft 8 in from the floor
Throw distance
237.0 cm
7 ft 9¼ in to the board face
Squared diagonal
293.2 cm
9 ft 7½ in bull to throw line
The diagonal is the measurement nearly every home install skips, and it is the only one that catches the pair of errors that hide each other on a tape measure: a board hung high with the throw line pulled in reads plausible on each axis taken alone and wrong on the hypotenuse. Run a tape from the centre of the bull to the player’s edge of the throw line — that length is 9 ft 7½ in (293.2 cm).
On a standard 451 mm bristle board the bottom edge then sits 150.2 cm (4 ft 11⅛ in) off the floor and the top edge 195.3 cm (6 ft 4⅞ in) — the two marks you can actually hold a level against while the bracket goes on.
Rule books print the steel-tip diagonal as 9 ft 7⅜ in (293.1 cm). Squared off the two regulation figures it comes out at 9 ft 7½ in — a difference of 2.0 mm, narrower than the pencil line you will mark it with. Either figure hangs a legal board; we quote the calculated one because it is the number the other two measurements imply.
Check an install you already have
UnitsFloor to the centre of the bull, not to the top of the board.
Board face to the player’s edge of the throw line, along the floor.