Setting up your own home gym is one of the best investments you can make in your training — if you plan it right. The most expensive mistake almost always happens at the start: people buy equipment first and only then work out what for. The result: a room full of gear that doesn’t fit together.
We’ve been building training spaces in Switzerland for over 13 years — more than 2000 home gyms, from a corner of the living room to a full HYROX garage. Garage, basement or a fitness room at home — the logic is the same. Here are five things we explain again and again, plus the checklist you walk into the planning with. The complete knowledge — including 5 ready-made setups and the flooring strategies in detail — we’ll send you free as a PDF at the end.
1. Concept first, equipment second
Before you think about racks or plates, answer three questions: Who trains (just you, partner, kids)? What do you train (strength, HYROX, functional)? Should the setup grow with you?
Almost everything else follows from that — including the floor area. A basic setup with rack, bench and barbell needs 8–12 m². A functional family wants more like 15–25 m² with free space for several people. HYROX training starts around 20 m² (sled track, wall ball, cardio). Equipment follows the concept — never the other way around.
2. Measure the room — fitness room, basement or garage
Sounds obvious, often goes wrong. Ceiling height decides what’s possible: Olympic lifts ideally want 2.70–3.00 m, box jumps 2.60 m plus clearance. But a lot works much lower — pull-ups work under 2 m too (your chin has to clear the bar, not the bar the ceiling), and many of our racks can be shortened.
Factor in that the floor takes 15–25 mm of height, more with a multi-layer build. And think in zones — strength, cardio, free space — not just in square metres. Cram everything into one corner and you end up with a storage room, not a gym. Rule of thumb: before you say „won’t fit“, send us the measurements.
The second point almost nobody has on their radar: what you’re fixing to. A wall-mounted rack needs load-bearing concrete or brick — no wall mount holds in plasterboard or hollow block. With screed over timber joists, it’s worth checking the load capacity before 300 kg of plates end up in one corner. And underfloor heating doesn’t mean „not possible“, but it does shape the floor build-up. A photo of the wall and floor is usually enough for us to judge it.
And if the room is small: a well-thought-out home gym in a small space beats a cluttered garage any day. Even a small fitness room in the basement or next to the living room becomes a full training space with the right planning — it’s about the selection, not the square metres. For the garage we’ve covered the specifics separately: setting up a garage gym.
3. A thicker floor isn’t automatically quieter
Myth no. 1. Past a certain thickness, more rubber barely adds anything — that’s the physics of structure-borne sound. If you’re at 25 mm and the impact is already noticeably dampened, 40 or 50 mm won’t move you into a different league.
What actually helps in an apartment block isn’t more thickness, it’s the right combination: a multi-layer build with decoupling (reckon 5–10 cm of build-up) or a targeted drop zone exactly where the bar lands. And yes, rubber smells — for the first few weeks. ECO recycled rubber clearly more intense, the finer HG lines more subtle. In small rooms we almost always recommend HG. We tell you that before you buy, not after.
Which flooring family suits your room, we walk through in the rubber flooring guide — including thicknesses, laying and drop zones.
4. Buy in the right order
Spend money in the wrong order and you’ll regret it later. This order works for almost any setup:
Better to buy the right thing and grow piece by piece than everything at once — and half of it sits unused. Buying twice costs more than buying once, well. You’ll find the parts bundled under home gym equipment.
5. Start small and grow modular
That only works if your setup can grow with you. A wallmount today, a power rack in two years, a rig in five — with compatible components, no investment is lost. That’s exactly what our modular A-Line is built for: you start where you are today and add on instead of rebuying.
What does a home gym cost?
The question comes up in every second conversation — and the honest answer is: it depends on what you want to train. Three ballparks, the way we put them together in practice:
Around CHF 3,000 — the honest entry
A drop zone instead of full-area flooring, squat stand or wall mount, barbell, a solid set of plates and a flat bench. That covers strength training completely — and you’ve bought nothing you’ll have to replace later.
Around CHF 5,000 — the room becomes a gym
Flooring across the whole area, power rack with pull-up bar, barbell and plates, adjustable bench. Plus first additions like rings or kettlebells.
Around CHF 10,000 — the complete setup
Rack with cable pulley, flooring including drop zones, a dumbbell set, one cardio machine and storage so the room stays tidy.
These are ballparks, not price lists — the split shifts with the room and your focus. More important than the total is the order: four right pieces beat eight half-right ones.
✅ Your checklist: 9 points before planning
Come into the consultation with clear answers and you save time and get better recommendations. This is the basis for every conversation — let’s tick it off together:
↓ Download the checklist as a PDF
To print and fill in — no sign-up needed.
We don’t sell equipment. We build gyms.
That’s the difference from any online shop. You send us your room measurements — length, width, height, plus specifics like pillars, sloped ceilings or doors. We model your room in 3D and show you how the equipment stands in it: walkways, clearances, safety zones. You can see whether the bench really fits behind the rack — before you spend a single franc.
📥 Get the complete Home Gym Guide free
These five tips and the checklist are the start. The complete Home Gym Guide (30 pages, PDF) has the rest: the 5 typical setups with concrete recommendations, the flooring and noise strategies in detail, the full equipment guidance — and how we plan your room in 3D before you spend a single franc.
Hooked and ready to really get going on your planning? Then grab the complete guide — we’ll send it your way right now. Free, honest, no sales fluff.
Frequently asked questions
How much space do I need for a home gym?
For a strength setup with rack, bench and barbell, 8–12 m² is enough. If several people train or you want free space for functional sessions, plan for 15–25 m². What matters more than the area is how you split it into zones — and the ceiling height.
What does a home gym cost?
An honest entry with drop zone, squat stand, barbell, plates and bench lands around CHF 3,000. At roughly CHF 5,000 the whole room becomes a gym, including a power rack and full-area flooring. Around CHF 10,000 adds a cable pulley, dumbbells, cardio and storage.
Which flooring belongs in a home gym?
For most rooms, rubber flooring from 15–25 mm, with a thicker drop zone exactly where the bar lands. More thickness across the whole area does less than most people think. In small rooms we recommend the finer HG lines, because ECO recycled rubber smells noticeably stronger in the first few weeks. Details in the rubber flooring guide.
A home gym in the basement — what should I watch out for?
Three things: ceiling height (often lower than the rest of the house — racks can be shortened), ventilation, and sound travelling upwards. In an apartment block, a decoupled build-up helps more than thicker flooring. And check how the equipment gets down there in the first place: stair width and door height decide a lot.
Which piece do I buy first?
The flooring. It’s the foundation, and swapping it later means clearing out half the room again. After that: rack, barbell, plates, bench — in that order. Specialty equipment comes last, once it’s clear what you actually need.
Why a guide at all?
Because a good home gym doesn’t start with equipment, it starts with the right questions. We don’t sell equipment — we build gyms. The guide takes the mistakes off your plate that we’ve seen in over 2000 projects, and gets you consultation-ready: when you talk to us after, we’re straight to „here’s what your setup could look like“.