“Women are happy to say yes to a game room or billiards room because they’re getting a lot of other things they want in a home,” said Ann Kingon, vice president of Bonita Springs-based Kingon Homes. “Women are getting their dream. The men should too.”

“A game room or clubroom provides a separate space, a boys’ room so to speak, where the guys can gather and relax, have a drink or cigar and watch the football game,” said Betsy Vannatta, customer service manager at Keevan Homes. “One of our clients added a game room so he had a place to play poker with his friends and not be in his wife’s hair.”

All battle-of-the-sexes references aside, game rooms rank up there right along with home theaters as the big must-haves in high-end homes, according to local builders. “These are what make homes in the upper end really exciting,” said Kingon. “More of our clients are entertaining in their homes. They’ll invite friends in for an evening at the theater as opposed to going out to the movies. Or after dinner, they simply retire to the game room.”

Vannatta has noticed the desire for a game room is often proportional to the time the homeowners spend in their Southwest Florida home. “If they’re seasonal residents, a game room probably isn’t as important. If they’re full-time or half-year residents, it’s more important.”

Mike DeWitt, owner of Gameroom Accessories & Design in Naples, has been in the billiards business 18 years. He attributes the recent resurgence of at-home game rooms to the rising stature of billiards and the game’s recognition as an Olympic sport. “We’re a small company, and we’re selling two to three tables a week,” he said. “People who are building new homes want a room for relaxing and entertaining guests. They don’t have to go anywhere. They can do it right there. It’s a place they can go and play. If they have kids, it keeps them at home.”

Children, particularly grandchildren, drive the desire for a game room for some buyers. A number of Kingon’s clients have combined a game room/billiards room with sleeping areas for visiting grandchildren.

“Some people want a game room for their grandchildren so they can play and not mess up the rest of the house,” said Vannatta.

High-rise developers have also responded to the desire for a designated place to ‘play.’ Estancia, the third luxury tower built by The Lutgert Companies at Bonita Bay in Bonita Springs, offers a card room on its amenities level, and the company’s most recently announced Bonita Bay high-rise, Azure, will have a game room equipped for cards and billiards.

Clients often fiddle with a builders’ existing floor plans to accommodate these special rooms. Builder Jerry Snell enlarged the study of a client’s home in The Estates at TwinEagles to accommodate a poolroom. The room has red and black carpeting, a dark wood table and bar. “He says they use it a lot,” said Snell, president of Snell Custom Homes. “I have a poolroom in my own house.”

Snell’s $5.1 million Amberly model home in The Estates at TwinEagles enjoys the distinction as the only model there with a billiards room. “It makes such an impact when you climb the spiral staircase, get to the landing and see it straight ahead,” the builder said. “It has a nine-foot slate table, wet bar, entertainment center with 35-inch television, bar-top tables with stools, a couch, wood wainscoting and sound-resistant carpeting. It’s beautiful. Visitors to the home say it was a great idea and that they would use the room all the time.”

Most game rooms do tend to cater to the male psyche with lots of wood and dark tones. This masculine sophistication is often heightened by fully equipped built-in bars sporting everything from mirrors, “floating” glass shelves, leather, granite, dish drawers, refrigerators, and even miniature beer kegs.

Hunt Construction’s billiards room in its $5 million Montelena model at Mediterra in Naples is perched atop an elegant spiral staircase. Decked out in rosewood floors, the room has a tray ceiling with rope lighting and a wrap-around bar covered with leather tiles and Baltic brown granite countertop set against a leather-and-mirror niche with glass shelves, columns and iron accents. Two double doors lead to a large balcony.

The second-floor game room in the Villa Trissina, a $6.5 million model home by Harbourside Custom Homes in Mediterra, offers the home’s second full bar and is equipped with custom cabinetry that can store any kind of barware, plus a paneled dishwasher drawer, ice maker, refrigerator, wine cooler and sink. Upper cabinetry gets a decorative touch with glass doors, and counters are topped with granite. The billiards table is oriented to a built-in entertainment center, and the ceiling above it gets a decorative touch with a trompe l’oeil design.

Though a game room tends to be the guy’s room, DeWitt finds a number of his female customers take on the larger role of choosing the table design and coloring, as well as accompanying furniture like game tables, pub chairs and bar stools. “Most women have a big influence. The pool table is the centerpiece of the room, and everything is matched to it.”

Sometimes a female perspective is simply not welcome or wanted. “One of our clients wants his upstairs game room to look just like a pub with the dark woods and dark green walls,” said Kingon. “His wife doesn’t care for green, but that’s OK. This will be his area of the home, his space.”

While his pool tables can run anywhere from $3,000 to more than $20,000, DeWitt points out that a good table is like a piece of furniture - one that may be used more than, say, the living room couch. “How many people spend that much on a couch no one sits on?” he asks.

A second-floor spot seems to be the most popular placement for a game room. “If the game room is upstairs, it’s usually because the views are so magnificent,” said Kingon, whose most recent models in Shadow Wood at The Brooks in Bonita Springs, The Villa Grande and The Mustique, both offered second-floor clubrooms with lavish treatments. The Mustique’s large clubroom conveyed a distinct masculine personality with a custom bar accented with leather, rope, bamboo, dark wood cabinetry and black granite countertops. A pullout bed was cleverly concealed in a steamer trunk. The builder is using a similar twist in the game room/flex room of its newest model, the Porto Venere, a four-bedroom, six-bath model home in The Reserve neighborhood at Shadow Wood. Instead of steamer trunks, beds will pop out of overstuffed chairs, said Kingon.

The second-floor bonus room over the garage in Southern Bay Home’s Valencia, a $1,395,000 model home in Shadow Wood, has been designated as a clubroom. “We’ve been getting a lot of requests the last couple of years for a room that can be used as a combination game room and grandkids’ room,” said Southern Bay President Mark Bagley. “These rooms are good-sized with full bathrooms and showers, cathedral or sloped ceilings and several windows for natural light. People usually set them up with a futon or sofa bed, a pool table, a dartboard, entertainment center and TV. We’ve also done built-in bars and media centers.”

Recently, Bagley has been accommodating requests to position bonus rooms at the rear of the home to enjoy the birds’-eye views of lakes, golf course fairways and nature preserves often displayed from homes in Shadow Wood. He’s even been locating some a little closer to the ground - right next to the family room.

In one custom home Kingon Homes built in The Brooks, double doors from the family room open into a game room, equipped with a billiards table, bar and darts. “This way the client is close to everything happening in the house,” she said. Other clients located their game room in a detached room, where two walls pocket away and open to the pool, creating instant outdoor living.

Spatial constraints and the love of the great outdoors are pushing some billiards tables outside. DeWitt just so happens to manufacture aluminum and stainless steel tables specially designed to bear weather’s wrath. Italian slate ensures an even playing surface and is covered by a weather-resistant felt-type material similar to that used for outdoor umbrellas and awnings.

Snell received a lot of positive comments about a pool table he placed on the lanai of one of his models. “It really got people saying, ‘Why don’t we have a game room?’” Game rooms, said Kingon, will continue to enjoy popularity as long as people continue to venture to Southwest Florida for fun in the sun. “When we ask our clients to start their wish list, game room and home theaters nearly always top the list,” she said. “Most of our clients are early retirees, and they’re very active. Having a game room or home theater simply enhances their choice of social activities.”