Your furniture measuring guide

Your furniture measuring guide

Buying new furniture for your home is an important decision. After all, the furniture you choose today will be part of your life for years to come, so you need to get it right.
You need to make sure that the furniture you buy is the right fit for your home, which means making sure that:

• the proportions are perfect for your room
• the furniture can fit(s) through your doors, stairs or hallways, clearing all access points.

How to get the proportions right
The first step in making sure that the furniture will be in proportion for your room is to measure the surface area of the space where you want to put the furniture.You can then make a rough floor plan with a note of the dimensions of the available space and the ceiling height. Check the width, height, and depth of the furniture you would like to order and include this in your rough floor plan and against the ceiling height.

Does it fit with ease?
If you find it hard to visualize the furniture in your room from a your floor plan alone, you can make 2D templates of your chosen furniture out of newspaper, or mark out the area where you would like the furniture to go using masking tape.
When marking out where the furniture will go, remember to leave adequate space around the furniture. With the exception of side tables and bedside tables, the rule of thumb is to allow at least 50cm of space between pieces of furniture. Interior designers also suggest leaving a distance of at least 20-30cm between a tall piece of furniture and the ceiling to create a feeling of space in the room.

Will it fit into my house?
Furniture Village offer split sofa options on some of our larger sofas. Some of our larger cabinets and beds also come apart so they are easier to move – so remember to take this into account when you are working out if the furniture will fit through doorways, halls and up staircases. To make sure that the furniture you want to order will not get stuck in your doorway, check that all widths and diagonal depths are less than the entry dimensions. You can check the diagonal depth on upholstery by placing a straight tape measure from the back of the frame to the front of the arm.

If it was easy to get your existing furniture in, and the new furniture is the same size, there should be no problem. It’s a useful exercise to compare the measurements of the furniture you already have with the model you want to replace it with.
When ordering a wall display unit, measure the wall you wish to place it against from floor to ceiling to make sure that the unit will fit with some space to spare. The diagonal height of the unit should be less than the entryways. When making sure that a piece of furniture will fit into your house, measure the width and height of all doorways, hallways, and stairways, including banisters and turns, and don’t forget about obstacles such as radiators, wall and ceiling lights.

TROUBLESHOOTING: If the very worst happens and your new furniture won’t fit in on delivery day, please do talk to us. We’ll search our huge range of products and use all the expert knowledge of our staff to come up with a great alternative. If you still want a particular piece of furniture that does not fit through normal entry points to your home, we can suggest other solutions. For example we could potentially put you in touch with a professional upholsterer who could take the arms off or split a fixed frame sofa on a chargeable basis. Another option would be to install your furniture via another route, however to do this you would have to contact a local tradesman to undertake the necessary work, which could involve removing fence panels or windows.

For expert advice from people who help with measurements every day, please visit or call any of our Furniture Village stores. Our consultants will be happy to help.