You’ve just gotten a brand-new bristle dartboard. You set it up, get your darts, and as you start to throw the first one, you have a question. How long should a dartboard last? That depends on how you installed your board, care for your board, how much you play, and your darts.
If everything is perfect, and you’re a casual, once or twice-a-week player, your dartboard should last you around four to five years. It ought to last about two years for someone who plays 45 minutes to an hour every day. If you’re a really serious player and play two or more hours a day, you probably know a good bristle dartboard will be around for six to eight months.
Following proper dart and dartboard maintenance is key to the longevity of your dartboard.
Properly Hang Your Dartboard
There are many factors involved when installing a dartboard. Whether you are installing it on drywall, in a dartboard cabinet, on your door, outside, or on wood, there are many variables to take into account.
- Have Great Lighting: Having a dartboard with no lighting can affect visibility of your dartboard. The intensity of the light is important too. Extremely bright light can dull the surface colors or cause distractions. A perfectly lit dartboard will increase user experience.
- Install a backboard: This puts a barrier between your wall and the board. It could prevent warping, help reduce dartboard noise, and it protects your walls.
- Install/Mount Your Dartboard Correctly: If you install a cabinet, ensure that you use the proper hardware and techniques to hang it right. A common material a dartboard is hung on is drywall. Hanging a dartboard on drywall takes a few extra steps in order to make sure it is sturdy and not going to fall off.
- Keep Your Dartboard Indoors: Don’t install the board in the sun, in a humid environment, or where rain can fall on it. It would be better if you didn’t try to install it outdoors. Keep your dartboard in a cool, dry place. If the location you put you put your dartboard in is in direct sunlight, you may notice your dartboard shedding fibers. The colors within the doubles and triples can spread beyond the wires.
Do Not Soak a Dartboard
It would be best if you didn’t wet a bristle dartboard or expose it to moisture. People used to wet down dartboards long ago. Makers used to build boards out of wood blocks, and they had to be soaked. These days, boards need to stay dry.
Exposing your dartboard to too much water can cause it to swell or bulge. If you need to spot clean your dartboard, simply take a damp cloth and wipe it clean. Do not soak your dartboard by any means.
Rotate Your Dartboard
Some segments take more of a beating than others during games like Cricket, so it’s best to rotate the ring. Remove the wire that has numbers on it and turn it a few segments once a week, mainly if you play regularly.
Unfortunately, the 25 and bullseye, which are used a lot in Cricket, can’t be protected and will wear out faster than other parts of the board.
Play on a High Quality Premium Dartboard
You will have to replace your dartboard. But if you take care of it, it will last longer for you, giving you more time to play and sharpen your game. When you get a board, buy a quality one, you’ll be glad.
We recommend this Winmau dartboard on Amazon as it is high quality, long lasting, and budget-friendly.
Some other great mentions are Unicorn and Target Darts. Unicorn has been the top pick of dartboards by the PDC for many years and is another brand that won’t let you down in terms of longevity and quality.
Maintain Your Dart Tips
You want sharp, not excessively sharp, steel dart points. Overly sharpened dart points can dig into the ring’s metal and bounce off instead of deflecting off the ring, going in, and scoring.
Blunt, hooked, and engineered dart points will damage the board. Makers construct the board out of Kenyan sisal, fibers that “self-heal” when a dart point pushes into them. You want to twist a dart when you remove it from the board to help the board heal—pulling it straight out damages the board.
Engineered points have grips on the points that are there to keep the dartboard from losing the dart. Hooked tips can pull bristles out of the board, leaving unsightly holes and requiring you to replace the board sooner.
Engineered tips cause bristles in the dartboard to over-compact when the dart goes in, and the board doesn’t heal when you remove them. Likewise, blunt points on a dart push the sisal into the board, preventing the fibers from healing.
Final Thoughts
How long a dartboard will last you really boils down to the quality of the dartboard, and how well you maintain it. Be sure to start with a high quality dartboard for the maximum life out of your dartboard.
Keep your dartboard indoors and out of extreme weather. Don’t forget to rotate your dartboard to even out the wear across the entire board. When pulling out darts from your dartboard, be sure to add a slight twist to help them slide out easily and to not damage the sisal fibres.
Keep your darts nice and sharp. Dull darts tend to cause more bounce-outs which can actually harm your dartboard over time. Your dartboard should last you a good amount of time, at least a few years, if all these steps are taken into consideration.