How to move a pool table

The short answer: if your table has a slate bed, it must be dismantled — rails off, cloth released, slates lifted individually, frame apart — and then re-leveled at the other end. If it has an MDF bed, you can usually slide or carry it in one piece with four people and no tools. Trying to move an assembled slate table is how slates crack and frames twist, and neither damage is cheap to undo.

The reason the two cases are so different is weight distribution. A slate bed is three separate pieces of stone resting on a frame, held in position by gravity, beeswax in the seams and the rails bolted over the top. The frame is designed to carry that stone when it is level and still, not when it is being tipped through a doorway. Lift one end of an assembled slate table and the load concentrates on corners never designed for it.

If you are unsure and the table is heavy enough that you cannot rock it by hand, treat it as slate. Our guide to how heavy is a pool table has the weight bands by size and construction, which is the fastest way to identify what you are dealing with.

Quick picks

Tap any row to jump to the full write-up.

#	Product	Best for	Price
1	Best protection during a move BearCover Heavy-Duty Fitted Pool Table Cover The cheapest way to stop cloth damage while the table is in pieces.	Any move where the table will sit covered for more than a day	$39.99View on Amazon
2	Best if moving is routine Fat Cat Trueshot 6 ft Folding Billiard Table A folding MDF table that genuinely moves without tools.	Rentals, shared spaces and rooms that change use	$546.53$811.9933% offView on Amazon
3	Best genuinely portable table Hathaway Fairmont 6 ft Portable Pool Table Small and light enough to carry out of the room by hand.	Apartments, spare rooms and tables that get put away	$399.99View on Amazon

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1. Best protection during a move

BearCover Heavy-Duty Fitted Pool Table Cover

BearCover

The part of a pool table most likely to be ruined by a move is not the slate — it is the cloth. Cloth picks up grit, snags on a door frame, and absorbs anything damp it is laid against, and none of that is repairable short of recovering the bed.

A heavy fitted cover is worth having before the move starts. It keeps the bed clean while the room around it is full of boxes, and once the table is reassembled it stops the layer of dust that otherwise settles during the weeks after a house move when nobody is playing yet.

What we like

• Keeps grit and dust off the cloth during and after the move
• Costs a tiny fraction of a recover
• Useful permanently, not just for the move
• Fits over rails so the whole playing surface is protected

Worth knowing

• Does nothing to protect slate or frame
• Needs to be the right size for your table
• Trapping damp underneath is worse than no cover

Who it’s wrong for

Somebody looking for a way to avoid dismantling. A cover protects cloth; it does not make a slate table portable.

$39.99·View on Amazon

#ad · We earn a commission on qualifying purchases. How this is funded · Price as of November 9, 2026

2. Best if moving is routine

Fat Cat Trueshot 6 ft Folding Billiard Table

Fat Cat (GLD Products)

If you expect to move the table more than once, the honest answer is to own a table designed to move. A folding MDF table has no slate to crack and no leveled frame to disturb, and it folds to a footprint one person can walk through a doorway.

The trade is real and worth stating plainly: MDF plays slower than slate, it sags over years, and it will never feel like a proper table. For somebody whose table has to live in a room that also does other things, that is a sensible exchange rather than a compromise.

What we like

• Folds without tools, so moving is minutes rather than a day
• No slate to crack and no bed to re-level
• Light enough for one or two people
• Fits through standard doorways folded

Worth knowing

• MDF bed plays slower than slate and sags over years
• Small playing surface compared with a full table
• Folding mechanism is a wear point

Who it’s wrong for

A permanent game room. Buy slate and move it once properly — see slate vs MDF.

$546.53$811.9933% off·View on Amazon

#ad · We earn a commission on qualifying purchases. How this is funded · Price as of November 9, 2026

3. Best genuinely portable table

Hathaway Fairmont 6 ft Portable Pool Table

Hathaway

This is the category below folding: a short portable table that two people lift. If the reason you are searching how to move a pool table is that the table has to come out of the room regularly rather than once, this is what actually solves it.

Nobody should pretend it plays like a real table. The bed is short, the rails are light and the pocket geometry is forgiving. What it does is let a small home have pool at all, and get the room back afterwards.

What we like

• Light enough for two people to carry
• No dismantling or leveling involved
• Fits rooms that cannot host a full table
• Stores against a wall between sessions

Worth knowing

• Short bed changes the game significantly
• Light rails give inconsistent rebound
• Not a table a regular player will stay happy with

Who it’s wrong for

Anybody who wants the table to feel like the one in a pub. It is a different thing wearing the same name.

$399.99·View on Amazon

#ad · We earn a commission on qualifying purchases. How this is funded · Price as of November 9, 2026

1. Photograph everything first. Rail positions, bolt locations, how the cloth is fixed. Reassembly is guesswork otherwise, and the photographs take a minute.
2. Remove the pockets and then the rails. Rails are bolted through from underneath; keep every bolt and washer bagged and labeled by rail. Mixing them up is the single most common reassembly problem.
3. Release the bed cloth. It is stapled or glued to the slate. If you intend to reuse it, this is the delicate step and the one most likely to go wrong — plan to replace the cloth if it is more than a few years old anyway.
4. Lift the slates one at a time, on edge, with at least two people per piece. Stone breaks under bending load, not compression, so never carry a slate flat. Stand them on edge against a wall on something soft.
5. Dismantle the frame and legs. Keep hardware bagged per assembly.
6. At the other end, level the frame before any slate goes back on. This is the step amateurs skip and it is the one that decides whether the table plays true.
7. Re-seat the slates, wax the seams, re-cloth, re-rail, re-level. Then leave it a few days and check the level again — floors settle and so does a freshly assembled frame.

An MDF bed is one piece and bonded to the frame, so it does not need to come apart. The job becomes a furniture move with two specific risks: corner damage, because the corners carry load they were not designed to carry when the table is tipped, and racking, where the frame twists and the bed takes a permanent set.

• Slide rather than lift wherever the floor allows. Furniture sliders under the legs and four people pushing is gentler than four people carrying.
• Never lift by the rails. Lift under the frame, at the legs. Rails are trim, not structure.
• Keep it level while it moves. Tipping a long MDF bed on its side is what puts a bow in it.
• Protect the corners and pockets with blankets before it goes anywhere near a door frame.
• Take the legs off if the doorway is tight rather than angling the whole table through.
• Check the level at the other end and adjust the feet. MDF tables drift more than slate ones because the bed itself flexes.

Stairs are where most pool table moves go wrong, and the maths is unforgiving. A single slate from a full-size table is a two-person lift on flat ground; on a staircase the person below is carrying most of it at an angle, and stone does not tolerate being flexed. If a slate table has to come down or up stairs, that is the clearest case for professional movers there is.

An MDF table on stairs is a furniture problem rather than a danger, but measure the turn, not just the width. A long bed that fits the stair width can still be impossible at a landing, and discovering that halfway is how corners get crushed. Taking the legs off buys most of the clearance you need.

A lot of people searching this do not want to move house — they want the table two feet to the left, or out of the way of new flooring. On an MDF table, sliders and four people will do it, and you re-level afterwards. On a slate table, short moves are still risky, but they are the one case where moving assembled is sometimes done: very slowly, lifted not dragged, with people at every corner, and accepting that the table will need re-leveling and may need the slate seams re-waxed.

If the reason for the move is flooring, the right order is to have the table dismantled, do the floor, and have it reassembled and leveled on the finished surface. A table leveled on an old floor and then set down on a new one will not be level, and level is the one specification a pool table cannot fake.

Check the level in both directions and at several points on the bed, not just the middle, and check it again a week later. Then clean the cloth properly before anybody plays, because a move puts grit on a bed and grit in cloth is what wears both the cloth and the ball set — the method is in how to clean a pool table.

If the move is part of buying a used table, settle the condition question first: do pool tables hold their value covers what a second-hand table is worth, and how long do pool tables last covers what you are inheriting. And if the table you are moving turns out to be in worse shape than the move is worth, our main pool table roundup is the place to start again.

Every move ends with the same job, and it is the one people skip: the table has to be re-levelled where it lands. Floors vary across a room, let alone across a house, and a table that was true in its old spot almost never is in the new one. How to level a pool table has the full method.

A ping pong table is a far easier version of this job and still goes wrong in predictable ways, since a rollaway invites people to be casual about it. If there is one in the same room, how to move a ping pong table covers the folding, threshold and stair rules for that one.

If you are weighing this against hiring someone, the published figures are worth reading before you decide: a local professional move typically runs a few hundred to around fifteen hundred dollars depending on size, slate and access. Pool table moving cost breaks the quote down line by line and lists what a real one has to include.