This is a common thing and a wonderful addition to anyone’s home. If you’re lucky enough to even have a one-car garage or spare bedroom available, you will get much joy from having a space where you can be free to move wherever the spirit takes you.
The biggest first decision you will make will be, “Do I want to spend the money on the most expensive thing, the FloatFloor® Shock Absorbing Subfloor?” The answer is: It’s nice but if you’re not doing a lot of jumping it’s less valuable than if you’re doing a lot of jumping. Or another reason to give that expensive piece value would be that your joints are already kind of messed up and you just don’t want to make your situation any worse.
Then the second thing you would decide is what type of surface texture you would like. Nowadays PVC, vinyl sheeting AKA marley is a very popular surface, especially for ballet. I don’t know of any ballet companies that don’t dance on “marley”. If you don’t use a FloatFloor® Shock Absorbing Subfloor, then you can put the marley surface directly on top of another hard surface. It is not recommended to put it on the carpet at all, especially with ballet because when you go on pointe, you point-load the marley and it sinks inside the carpet which can dangerously add friction to your turns, putting more stress on your ankles, etc.
The next thing you might consider is a mirror. Most of the older teachers like Rosalie, my mom, didn’t believe in mirrors. She thought that the dancer needs to know when their body is in proper alignment without having to look into a mirror. Nevertheless, mirrors are very popular and they make the room look a lot bigger. Generally speaking, the best wall to have a mirror on is the one opposite the entry door because your room looks bigger as soon as you walk in.
You may also want ballet barres. Ballet barres have become an iconic fitness tool as well as their origin which is a necessity for any ballet class. Ballet barres originally are used for balance when doing barre work and for stretching.
There’s freestanding and there are wall-mounted barres. Most larger studios need a combination of both. However, in our opinion, a small home studio or even medium-sized studio may get away with just having one or the other. I prefer to recommend wall-mounted ballet barres for two reasons. First, they’re stronger because they are mounted onto a very solid surface. Another reason would be that there is nothing on the floor to be an obstruction when you’re dusting or cleaning the floor. A free-standing barre, however, allows you to move it around in case you want to have a different angle looking at the mirror or even to work in a different location. A third option is floor mounted and those are the least popular because they make it harder to clean the floor and they’re more expensive than a wall bracket. The only reason or I should say, the best reason for them is if you want to put barres in front of a mirror that you cannot mount to. An existing mirrored wall is inappropriate/impractical to mount a wall bracket- Therefore having to use the solid floor as the structural support.
-Matt Lincir
