What size tablecloth for a 60-inch round table?

A 60-inch round table takes a 120-inch round tablecloth for a floor-length drop, 108-inch for a 24-inch drop, and 90-inch for a 15-inch lap drop. Round linen is simpler than rectangular linen for one good reason: a round cloth on a round table drops the same amount everywhere, so there is one number rather than two. I’m Daniel Pitner, Director of Sales at EventDiagram, twelve-plus years in the event industry. Before the chart, the fact that resolves most of the confusion in this question: a 5-foot round and a 60-inch round are the same table. Rental companies list it both ways, often on the same page, and I have watched a venue order two different cloths for one stack of tables because of it.

The drop arithmetic for a round table

drop = (cloth diameter − table diameter) ÷ 2

A 60-inch round table is 30 inches high, so floor length is a 30-inch drop, which needs 60 + 30 + 30 = a 120-inch cloth. That is the whole calculation, and it is worth doing once yourself so you can check any claim on any rental site in about four seconds.

Tablecloth sizes for a 60-inch round table

What size table does a 120-inch round tablecloth fit?

This is the same question asked from the other end, and it is the one a venue with a linen closet actually has. A 120-inch round gives you:

The practical version: a stack of 120s dresses your 60-inch rounds to the floor and your 72-inch rounds to the seat line. If your inventory is mixed and your linen is not, that is the difference you will see across the room, and it is the reason to buy 132s for the 72s rather than making the 120s stretch.

Which drop to actually use

• Dinner rounds — floor length, 120-inch. Guests sit at these and a floor-length round is fine, unlike a floor-length rectangle: the drop falls between chairs, not across knees.
• Rooms that flip — 108-inch. Staff can move a table without gathering the cloth off the floor first.
• Cocktail hour and casual service — 90-inch lap length.

Overlays, toppers and chair covers

An overlay sits on top of the base cloth and is sized by taste rather than arithmetic: 72- and 85-inch squares are the common ones on a 60-inch round, the square dropping points over a round drop. The thing worth knowing is that an overlay changes how the base cloth reads, so if you are economising, a 90-inch base under a good overlay looks more considered than a 120-inch base with nothing on it.

Chair covers are ordered by chair, not by table, and they are the item most often forgotten until the floor plan is signed — count them off the seat count, not off the table count, because the two are different the moment a table runs eight instead of ten.

Related numbers

How many people that 60-inch round actually holds — and why the honest answer is eight rather than ten — is in how many people fit at a 60-inch round table . For rectangles, where the arithmetic stops being symmetrical and the ends and sides drop differently, see the 6-foot table and the 8-foot table. The tablecloth size calculator runs any table against any cloth.

Where we obviously stand

We build EventDiagram, and this page exists because linen is downstream of the floor plan: you cannot order cloths until you know how many tables of what size are going in the room, and most people are guessing at that. Drawing the room to scale first turns the linen order into arithmetic. The free tier will lay out a reception and count the rounds for you.