How much space do I need to leave around furniture?

Furniture is chosen by its own dimensions and a room fails on the gaps between them. A wardrobe that fits the wall perfectly is useless if its doors cannot open, and a route narrower than about 450mm simply stops being used, which quietly takes a whole part of the room out of service. These are the numbers that make the difference between a small room and an unusable one.

What you'll need

• Tape measure
• Paper and pencil, or a room planner
• Masking tape, for marking furniture footprints on the floor

Step by step

1. Measure the room properly first, including the awkward bits.Wall lengths, the door position and which way it swings, window and radiator positions, the sill height, the chimney breast, and any sloping ceiling. Sketch it roughly to scale.
2. Mark the furniture footprints on the floor with tape.Actual sizes, in the actual positions. It takes ten minutes and it settles arguments that a plan on paper cannot. Then walk the routes.
3. Use 750mm for a comfortable route.This is the width where two people pass without shuffling and where a route feels generous rather than tolerated. It is the target in any room that has the space.
4. Accept 600 to 700mm as the working minimum.A daily route — the side of a bed, the way to a window — works at this. It feels tight, but it works, and it is the realistic figure in a small UK bedroom.
5. Treat 450mm as the squeeze limit.One person, sideways, occasionally. Anything narrower is not a route: it stops being used, and the part of the room beyond it becomes storage.
6. Give a wardrobe 900mm in front of it.This is the dimension most often missed. It is not the door swing alone — it is the swing plus enough room to stand square and see what is inside. A wardrobe that fits the wall and not the room is the classic mistake, and sliding doors remove the swing entirely and can save half a metre where there is none to spare.
7. Give drawers 750 to 900mm.A fully extended drawer is 450 to 550mm deep, plus a person standing in front of it. A chest of drawers opposite a bed with 500mm between them means the drawers open into the mattress.
8. Check the room door swings fully.It must open to at least 90 degrees without hitting anything. Where it will not, the swing can very often be reversed by moving the hinges to the other side, which frees a whole corner.
9. Use the larger dimension where routes cross.Two routes meeting at a corner need the larger of the two clearances at the junction, not the smaller. Corners are where people actually collide with furniture.
10. Where the room cannot give the clearances, change the furniture.Shallower, fewer or differently-opening items — sliding doors, a shallow chest, wall-hung storage, a bed with drawers instead of a separate chest. Pushing the same furniture closer together does not work, because the routes below 450mm stop being used and the room stops functioning.

Tips

• Measure the diagonal of the room as well. It is often the dimension that lets a bed or a sofa turn to get into position even if the straight routes are tight.
• Doors, radiators, sockets and light switches are all things furniture must not block. Mark them on the plan before placing anything.
• In a rented or shared house, the tape-on-the-floor exercise is worth doing before buying anything at all. Returns on furniture are a nuisance and delivery access is a separate problem again.

Common mistakes

• Planning to the furniture's dimensions and not to the gaps — Everything fits on paper and nothing opens. The clearances are what determine whether the room works.
• Forgetting the wardrobe door swing — It is the largest single clearance in a bedroom and it is invisible on a plan that shows only footprints. Draw the swings.
• Putting a chest of drawers opposite a bed in a narrow room — The drawers open into the mattress. Move the chest to the foot of the bed or choose a shallower unit.
• Squeezing a route to 300mm to fit one more item — That route is now unused, so everything beyond it is out of reach. The item has cost more space than it occupies.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask