GymPlanner

Home gym with 8 foot ceilings

Eight feet is the most common ceiling height in a house and the most common thing people forget to measure. A rack fits. Pressing a bar overhead inside it mostly does not, and neither does a pull-up. This layout is what a good gym looks like when 96 inches is the hard limit.

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Room
12 × 16 ft
Floor area
192 sq ft
Ceiling
8 ft
Pieces
11
Est. cost
$2,507
Total weight
1,009 lb

What to know about this room

The number that matters is your reach, not the rack height

Stand up, press an empty bar overhead, and measure from the floor to the bar. That is usually 84 to 90 inches for an average-height lifter. Whatever headroom you have left over is what you actually get to work with.

A short rack beats a tall rack you cannot use

Racks around 71 to 72 inches leave room to stand a bar up inside and to press without ducking. You lose the pull-up bar, which at 8 feet you were not going to use anyway.

Where the pull-ups go instead

A lat pulldown or a rack-mounted pulley covers vertical pulling with no headroom cost. This layout includes one. It is not the same movement, but it is trainable and progressive, which a pull-up bar you cannot hang from is not.

Overhead press seated, or step out of the rack

Seated on an incline bench you lose maybe six inches of bar travel at the top. Or press standing outside the rack where the ceiling is clear of light fixtures. Both work; both need to be planned for rather than discovered.

The equipment in this layout

9 products, about $2,507 all in. Our own planning estimate, not the retailer's price — check each listing before you buy.

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