Short answer: yes, you can smoke in your simulator bay. People do it every winter.
The smell is not the problem. Everybody worries about the smell and almost nobody worries about the screen, which is backwards. Cigar smoke is oily. It lands on things, and the three things in a simulator bay that hold it are the three most expensive soft surfaces you own.
So here's the honest version, before you build.
The screen is the thing to protect
An impact screen is a tensioned sheet of woven fabric hanging in the path of everything airborne in that room. Smoke drifts up, hits the screen, and stays.
It doesn't ruin the screen overnight. It does two things slowly. It dulls the surface your projector is throwing light at, so the image goes flat and you blame the projector. And it leaves a film that grabs every bit of dust and dirt off the golf balls, so the screen gets dirty faster than it otherwise would.
Now look at how you're allowed to clean one. Carl's Place, who makes the screens, says soap and water first, then a stain pen or an all-purpose cleaner, then a portable carpet cleaner for the stubborn stuff. What they say never to do: abrasive cleaners, high-heat steamers, dry cleaning, or a washing machine. They also say to get to stains quickly, because the longer one sits the harder it comes out.
Tar is a stain that arrives slowly and covers the whole screen at once. You can't spot-treat it. That's the whole issue.
There's no warranty on a screen anywhere in this industry. They're wearable goods. So the move is airflow, not cleaning.
Turf and the rest of the fabric
Same mechanic, less money at stake. The hitting mat and any turf on the floor are nylon or polyethylene fiber, and fiber holds smoke.
Every cigar room guide tells you the same thing about furniture, and it applies here. Leather, wood, metal and tile hold almost nothing. Fabric holds smoke close to permanently. A simulator bay is already a room full of fabric by design, which is exactly why the seating and the floor around it should not add more.
Put a washable rug in there if you want one. Skip the fabric couch.
The projector nobody thinks about
Projectors pull room air through an intake to cool the lamp or the laser. Whatever is in that air ends up on a filter, and eventually on the optics.
This is not a theory. Ask around any projector owner forum and you'll find people who smoked in a media room and watched the picture go dim and yellow over a year or two. The fix is not exotic: clean the filter on a real schedule instead of when you remember, and keep the smoke away from the intake.
Worth reading your own projector's warranty language before you assume you're covered. Some manufacturers are specific about smoke and residue. That's a five-minute check that could save you a thousand dollars.
What actually fixes it: moving the air
Filtering the room is the wrong goal. Getting the smoke out is the right one.
For one person smoking in a room roughly 10 by 12 with an 8-foot ceiling, the guidance you'll see repeated is an exhaust fan in the 200 to 300 CFM range. A single 250 CFM wall fan handles about 120 square feet. Once you've got four or five guys going, the number jumps hard, into the 900 to 1100 CFM range.
A simulator bay is usually bigger than 120 square feet and has more air volume than a card room. Size up, not down.
Three kinds of gear, and they do different jobs:
Exhaust fan. Pulls smoke out of the building. No filters to replace. This is the one that actually solves the problem, and it's the cheapest of the three.
Smoke eater. An electrostatic unit that charges particles and collects them. Good for larger rooms, nothing to replace, but it needs regular cleaning or it stops working and you won't notice.
Air purifier. Activated carbon does something for odor. A basic HEPA box off a shelf does very little against cigar smoke, whatever the label says. Treat a purifier as cleanup, not ventilation.
If you want the real answer and you're already spending simulator money: a dedicated exhaust running to the outside, plus a carbon purifier to catch what's left. That combination beats a $600 purifier by itself, every time.
The mistake that stinks up the whole house
Your basement almost certainly has an HVAC return in it. That return is a straight pipe from your simulator bay to every bedroom upstairs.
Cover it while you're smoking. Not the supply vent, the return. Then roll a towel against the gap under the door and crack a window so the room stays slightly negative and air moves out instead of in.
That's a fifteen dollar fix that does more for household peace than anything else on this page. Anyway, it's the one people skip.
Small things that help more than they should
Smoke that never gets into the air can't land on your screen. A deep floor ashtray with a lid does more work than it looks like, because a cigar sitting in an open tray between shots is producing smoke the entire time you're swinging. Ours is the Stinky Herf Edition, stainless, built to sit next to a chair and get hosed off.
Keep the humidor out of the bay if you can. Not because smoke hurts it, but because a simulator room swings in temperature every time you use it and then stop using it, and stable is what a humidor wants.
And hit from the full ten feet off the screen. That's a screen-life rule, not a smoke rule, but it's the other half of making a screen last and it costs nothing.
What I'd do with a real basement
Exhaust fan sized at 400 CFM or better, ducted outside. Return vent covered. Leather chair, hard floor, washable rug. Floor ashtray with a lid. Projector filter cleaned every few months instead of never.
Do that and the room works for both things it's supposed to do. Skip it and you'll be shopping for a new impact screen in two years while the picture looks worse the whole way there.
Tell us the room
Send us your dimensions, your ceiling number, and whether you plan to smoke in there. We'll tell you what fits, and we'll tell you when the honest answer is to spend less.
Email support@fairwayandember.com or call (843) 310-1415.
Building the bay: golf simulators and complete packages. Building the other half of the room: humidors, cutters, lighters and ashtrays.
Most places will sell you one or the other. We'd rather get the whole room right.