Size guides, with sources.
Measurements for planning a room: how big, how far apart, and where each number comes from. Metric and imperial, side by side.
- sofa sizeWhat Size Sofa for Your Living Room? Measure It First
How long a sofa your living room can take: the wall rule, sofa depth, the coffee table gap, walkways, and a worked 12 × 14 ft example, in feet and metres. - bed sizeBed Sizes and the Bedroom You Need Around Them
Mattress sizes in inches and centimetres (US, UK and EU), the clearance to leave around a bed, and the smallest bedroom that fits each size with room to walk. - clearancesFurniture Clearances: Walkways, Kitchens, Dining, Beds
How much space to leave around furniture: walkways, kitchen work aisles, chairs at the dining table, sofas and beds, from the NKBA guidelines and makers. - dining tableDining Table Size: How Many Seats and How Much Room
How many people a dining table seats and how big the room must be: 24 in per diner, 32–44 in behind the chairs (NKBA), round and rectangular, feet and metres. - rug sizeWhat Size Rug? Living Room, Dining Room and Bedroom
How to choose a rug size: standard sizes in feet and cm, the rules for sofas, dining tables and beds, the floor border, and worked examples from a real flat. - couch and doorWill My Couch Fit Through the Door? How to Measure
Before delivery day: measure the door’s clear opening and the sofa’s depth, height and diagonal, then the turns. Worked example from a real flat, inches and cm. - kitchen islandKitchen Island Size: Clearances, Seats and Overhang
How big a kitchen island can be: the aisle around it (42 / 48 in), seats at 24 in each, knee space by counter height, and a cooktop on the island, from NKBA. - room sizesWhat Fits in a 10×12 Bedroom or a 12×12 Living Room?
Which bed fits a 10 × 12 ft bedroom with room to walk, and which sofa fits a 12 × 12 ft living room, worked out from mattress sizes and clearances, in ft and m. - reading plansHow to Read a Floor Plan: Walls, Doors, Scale and Areas
How to read a floor plan: walls, door swings, windows, sliding doors, stairs, dimension strings, scale and room areas, shown on the plan of a real 108 m² flat. - size tablesFurniture Sizes: US, UK and EU Tables in Inches and cm
Furniture size tables for the US, UK and Europe: bed and mattress sizes, sofa lengths, dining tables and seats, wardrobe and closet depths, in inches and cm.
Measure these first
- The room, wall to wall, at floor level, in both directions.
- Every door: its width and which way it swings into the room.
- Windows and radiators: where they are, and how low the sills come.
- The way in: the narrowest door, hall and turn a new piece must pass.
- Your furniture: width, depth and height, including legs and arms.
How we write these
Every number on these pages comes from a source we link at the bottom of the page: a published guideline where one exists, such as the National Kitchen & Bath Association’s planning guidelines, or a clearly marked rule of thumb where there is none. Tables are calculated from those numbers, not typed in by hand. Metric and imperial values are given side by side.
They are written by the team behind Floor Plan to Home, a tool that recreates your home from its floor plan at real size, because the questions they answer are the ones a real-size model is for: will it fit, and is there still room to walk. If you find a mistake, tell us at privacy@floorplantohome.com.