The $3,000 Frame: Golf Sim Enclosure Market Duopoly
Quick Context: The golf simulator enclosure market is a $200M+ industry growing at 8.5% annually, dominated by SIG and Carl’s Place. Enclosures range from $1,000 DIY kits to $3,500+ commercial builds. The biggest mistake new builders make is underestimating what a good enclosure costs — it’s the frame that holds your screen, contains errant shots, blocks light, and determines whether your sim looks like a professional installation or a tarp in a garage.
Every simulator build starts the same way. You pick a launch monitor first because that’s the fun part. Then you pick software because that’s where the magic happens. Then you figure out the projector, the mat, the PC.
Then you hit the enclosure wall.
You look at prices and realize the frame holding your screen costs more than your launch monitor. A SIG10 runs $1,999. A Carl’s Place DIY with a decent screen and a pipe kit lands around $1,700 to $2,200. The Carl’s Place Pro, the commercial-grade option, starts at $3,409. And that’s just the frame and fabric — no screen, no projector, no electronics.
This is the moment most people start looking for shortcuts. They buy a $300 Amazon screen, hang it from a 2x4 frame they built in an afternoon, and call it done. Two months later, the screen has a hole in the strike zone, the image looks like a drive-in movie, and every wedge shot bounces back at their shins.
The enclosure market is the most overlooked, most expensive, and most confusing part of any sim build. And it’s dominated by exactly two companies — you can see how they stack up in our SIG10 vs Carl’s Place enclosure comparison.
The Duopoly
The home golf simulator enclosure market is essentially a two-horse race. On one side, you have SIG, the brand owned by The Indoor Golf Shop, selling all-in-one kits through their SIGPRO line. On the other side, you have Carl’s Place, a Wisconsin-based company that’s been building enclosures since 2006, selling modular DIY kits that you customize piece by piece.
There are other players. SwingBay offers a stripped-down kit for about $1,200. PerfectBay, sold by TopShelf Golf, has a solid all-in-one option. Elite Screens makes a commercial-grade bay called the GolfSim Bay. But none of them have the market share, the community recognition, or the accessory ecosystem that SIG and Carl’s Place have built. If you search “golf simulator enclosure” on Reddit or the Golfsimulator forum, you’ll see the same two names in every thread.
This is a weird market dynamic. Launch monitors have a dozen serious competitors. Software has GSPro, E6, Awesome Golf, TGC 2019, and a handful of others. Projectors are a commodity category with hundreds of options. But enclosures? Two companies control the vast majority of the home market. And they have fundamentally different philosophies about how to build one.
The SIG Philosophy: One Box, Done
The SIG10 is the best-selling enclosure in the home market for a reason. It ships in a single box with everything you need: the frame, the screen, the side netting, the foam padding, the bungees. The poles are aluminum with color-coded push-button connectors. You don’t need tools. You don’t need to source pipes from a hardware store. You don’t need to make decisions about which screen tier to buy or whether to add net wall extensions. One person can assemble it in 45 minutes to an hour.
The SIGPRO Premium screen that ships with the SIG10 is independently tested. MyGolfSpy put it through a durability test — 400,000 shots at ball speeds up to 250 mph. It outperformed the competition on bounce-back, noise, and longevity. The screen fills 100% of the frame opening, which means no black border around your projected image. And the foam edge padding that runs along all four sides of the screen does something that sounds minor but matters more than you’d think: it stops balls from getting behind the enclosure. On a hard shank into the corner of the frame, the foam absorbs the impact and drops the ball straight down. The ball doesn’t sneak behind the screen and ricochet off your garage wall.
The trade-off is that you get exactly one size. The SIG10 fits rooms with at least 11 feet of width and a 9-foot ceiling. If your room is smaller, you can drop to the SIG8 ($1,699) or bump up to the SIG12 ($2,299). But you can’t customize the dimensions. You can’t order a 10-foot-wide enclosure for a 10-foot-wide room. The SIG10 is 10 feet 10 inches wide, and you need to fit that frame into your space.
The Carl’s Place Philosophy: Build It Your Way
Carl’s Place takes the opposite approach. Their DIY enclosure starts at $999.95 for the base kit — the screen, the enclosure fabric, and the mounting hardware. But that base price doesn’t include the pipes. You either buy the pre-cut pipe kit for $350 to $390, or you source your own 1-inch EMT conduit from a hardware store and cut it yourself. The enclosure comes in six standard sizes, and you can also order custom dimensions down to the inch. If your room is 10 feet 8 inches wide and you need every inch of that space, Carl’s Place will build you an enclosure that fits.
The screen system is different too. Carl’s Place uses a floor-to-turf design — the screen extends all the way to the floor with no gap at the bottom. This creates a seamless look where the projected image appears to continue onto the hitting surface. It’s a cleaner aesthetic than the SIG’s foam bottom padding, and it matters if you’re building a dedicated sim room where appearance counts.
The trade-off is that the Carl’s Place DIY requires more decisions and more assembly work. You need to choose between four screen tiers: Standard, Preferred, Premium, and High-Contrast Gray. The Standard screen is a mistake at any price point — it’s louder, bouncier, and noticeably worse on image quality. The Premium or High-Contrast Gray screens are the only reasonable choices. You need to decide whether to add foam inserts ($50 to $75), net wall extensions ($120), or a back cover kit. And the assembly takes 60 to 90 minutes with two people, plus a trip to the hardware store if you’re sourcing your own pipes.
The Carl’s Place Velcro flap system for edge protection is less secure than the SIG’s foam padding. The flaps open toward the golfer, and hard shanks into the sidewall can occasionally push through and send the ball behind the enclosure. You can fix this with foam inserts, but that’s another add-on purchase.
What’s Changed in 2026
The enclosure market hasn’t stood still. Three things have shifted in the last year.
First, screen-to-floor imaging is the trend everyone wants. The old enclosure design had a visible gap between the bottom of the screen and the floor, with foam padding or a pipe covering the gap. The new design eliminates that gap entirely. The screen extends to the floor, and the projected image flows seamlessly from the screen onto the turf. Carl’s Place pioneered this with their floor-to-turf design. SIG is catching up, but their current generation still uses foam bottom padding.
Second, screen materials have gotten dramatically better. The old standard was a single-layer woven polyester that was loud, bouncy, and prone to wear spots. The new standard is multi-layer spacer fabric — two heavy-duty polyester surfaces sandwiching vertical spacer yarns. This material absorbs impact instead of returning it, reduces noise by a huge margin, and shows a crisp 4K image without grain or pixelation. Both SIG and Carl’s Place now offer screens in this class, and the difference from even two years ago is night and day.
Third, the premium tier is expanding. Carl’s Place launched the Pro enclosure in 2025 with a 2-inch EMT frame, BlackStop light-blocking fabric, and an adjustable crossbar for mounting electronics. SIG has the SIGPRO Commercial line with similar capabilities. These enclosures are designed for dedicated sim rooms and commercial facilities where the enclosure is a permanent installation and the owner wants to mount projectors, launch monitors, and lights directly to the frame. The prices are $3,000 to $5,000, but for a permanent build, the upgrade is worth it.
What This Means for Your Build
If you’re building a simulator in a standard garage or basement with at least 11 feet of width and a 9-foot ceiling, buy the SIG10. It’s the most complete, most forgiving, lowest-friction enclosure on the market — check our best golf simulator enclosures guide for the full ranking. You will spend your mental energy on the things that actually matter — choosing the right launch monitor, dialing in your projector, hitting golf balls. You won’t be second-guessing your enclosure decisions.
If your room is a non-standard dimension, or you want the floor-to-turf seamless screen look, or you need to keep the enclosure cost under $1,500, buy the Carl’s Place DIY. Spec the Premium or High-Contrast Gray screen. Add the pipe kit. Budget for foam inserts and net wall extensions from day one. Your total cost will land around $1,700 to $2,200, which is directly competitive with the SIG10.
If you’re building a permanent dedicated room that will never move, and you want the best possible projection environment, buy the Carl’s Place Pro or the SIGPRO Commercial. You’re spending $3,000 to $5,000, but you’re getting a frame that can support your projector, your launch monitor, and your lighting. The enclosure becomes the infrastructure of the room, not just a frame holding a screen.
The one thing you should not do is cheap out. A $300 Amazon screen with a 2x4 frame is not a substitute for a proper enclosure — see our enclosure build guide for the right approach. It will bounce balls back at you, show a terrible projected image, develop wear spots in the strike zone within months, and generally make your simulator experience worse. The enclosure is the most expensive non-electronic component in your build for a reason. It’s the difference between a simulator that feels like a professional installation and one that feels like a tarp in a garage.