Service
The color coats set your court’s grip, pace and look. The lines settle every call made on it. We do both: sand-textured acrylic color in shades you choose, and lines placed where each sport’s rulebook puts them.
Before / after photos coming
Signs it’s time
The color coats are the part of an acrylic court you actually play on, and they do three jobs at once. The pigment gives the court its color, chosen by you from the coating maker’s chart. The silica sand mixed into each batch gives your shoes grip. And the size of that sand, plus whether a sand-free finish coat goes on top, sets the pace: how much the bounce slows the ball. Colors can change at every recoat, and so can pace.
The lines are the last layer and the one every call depends on. The ITF Rules of Tennis and the USA Pickleball rulebook both want lines in one color that clearly contrasts with the court. Both measure to the outside edges of the boundary lines, and both count a ball touching a line as in, with one exception: a pickleball serve that lands on the kitchen (non-volley zone) line is out. So a line needs the right width, the right spot and an edge you can see daylight against. We stripe after a color job, repaint lines gone gray, and add pickleball lines to tennis courts.
When a baseline fades toward the court color, it stops doing the one thing both rulebooks ask of it: contrast clearly with the surface. Close balls turn into arguments. If the color under it is sound, new lines alone may do.
Paint that crept under the tape leaves a fuzzy, toothed edge. USA Pickleball’s Rule 8.E lets players call a ball out only when they clearly see space between ball and line, and a ragged edge blurs that space.
Run a tape straight out from under the net. A tennis service line’s far edge should read 21 feet; a pickleball kitchen line’s, 7 feet. If yours miss, the court was probably striped by eye.
Court line paint carries texture so a line grips and plays like the color beside it, and one maker’s white can take added silica sand to match. A line that feels slick underfoot should be repainted with the right product.
If the ball skids through quicker than your players like, or sits up slower, you don’t need a new court to change it. The next color coats can be mixed and finished for a different pace.
The process
Every court is different, but the order of an acrylic job isn’t. Here’s the usual sequence, start to finish.
The job starts with the coating maker’s color chart. You pick the court color, the surround, and on a pickleball court a kitchen color if you want one. Pace comes next, since it decides the sand grade.
The court is washed of dirt, dust and anything loose; coating makers require a clean, dry surface before the first coat. Cracks and low spots are repaired first. Acrylic color covers a sound court, but it can’t mend a failing one.
Acrylic color is mixed with your sand grade and squeegeed on, as many textured coats as the coating maker’s spec calls for, each dry before the next. A sand-free finish coat follows if you chose one. All of it waits for air and surface at 50°F and rising, with no rain coming.
Once the color has cured, each court is measured out from the net and checked square on its diagonals. Every line is marked on the edge the rulebook measures to.
Line-paint makers call for tape pressed tight along each marked line, then a clear acrylic primer brushed over the tape edges. The primer fills the small voids between tape and textured surface, so paint can’t creep under, and it dries clear.
Line-paint makers specify textured paint brushed or rolled between the tapes, with temperatures above 50°F as it goes on and for a full day after, and the tape pulled as soon as the paint is dry. Coverage decides how many coats a line needs.
Once the tape is up, the measurements are worth repeating: service lines, kitchen lines, center marks. Then sight down each line from the baseline, because a straight line should look straight from where your players stand.
The details
01Residential
A backyard court answers only to you, so its colors can suit the house and the yard as well as the game. If the family plays tennis and pickleball, blended lines a shade lighter than the court let both games share it without a second set of white lines. You’ll see that court from the house every day, and a crooked line would bother you every day too. That’s the case for measuring every line out from the net and checking the diagonals before any paint goes down.
02Commercial
A club, school, HOA or park runs a bank of courts, and players move from court to court, so every one should read and play alike. That takes the same measurements on each court and color coats mixed to the same sand grade. Where singles is played on a doubles net, the ITF suggests small white dots for placing singles sticks, painted with the lines. If your board is weighing pickleball lines on tennis courts, put the USTA and ITF blended-line guidance in front of it first.
FAQ
It depends on the sport and the line. The ITF Rules of Tennis set the center service line and center mark at 2 inches, the other lines at 1 to 2 inches, and let baselines run as wide as 4. USA Pickleball calls for 2 inches on every line, kitchen lines included. In both, the court is measured to the outside edges, so a line painted on the wrong side of the string leaves the court a line’s width off.
Yes, as long as the color under them is still sound. A lines-only job usually means cleaning the court, checking each line against the rulebook, and repainting in place the ones that measure correctly. Moving a line is a bigger job, because the old one has to disappear under new color coats. And if the color itself is worn thin, crisp new lines will only make that easier to see.
Start with the ball. Standard tennis balls are white or yellow under ITF rules, and USA Pickleball lets ball colors vary, so pick a court color your ball stands out against. Then weigh heat: one coating maker notes that darker shades run hotter, especially those with black pigment, while colors with the most white stay coolest. Lines are simpler; they just need one color that clearly contrasts with the court. Call Bill at 215-251-2984 to talk colors.
It sets the texture and the pace. One coating maker goes as far as saying the sand rating is, in effect, the pace rating. In that maker’s spec, textured coats with coarser 60–80 mesh sand make its medium-slow system, ITF Category 2. Finer 80–100 mesh sand gives its medium system, Category 3, and adding a sand-free finish coat gives medium-fast, Category 4. One pickleball coating’s maker calls its texture non-slip but non-aggressive, to spare the ball.
From the court’s own color. ITF guidance keeps blended lines in the same color family, lighter than the court, and limits the difference to about what mixing 25 percent white paint, by volume, into the court color would give. It also wants them within 5 points of the court’s pace rating. USTA guidance sets the shape: textured line paint 1.5 inches wide, stopping 3 inches short of the tennis lines. Call Bill at 215-251-2984 to plan yours.