Sofa and seating fit checker

Sofa and seating fit checker#

Enter the room and the sofa. The calculator checks the walkways it leaves on every side, the coffee table gap, the rug size that suits it, and whether it will get through the door.

Inches Centimetres

Room width in

Room length in

Sofa length in

Sofa depth in

Narrowest door or hall width in

What faces the sofaMedia console, 18 in deepTwo chairs, 34 in deepA second sofa, 38 in deepNothing, an open wall

Enter your measurements above.

Delivery is checked against the diagonal of the sofa section, because a sofa turns on its end through a doorway. Anything over 7 ft long should also be checked against the stair and landing turn.

Nothing you type leaves your browser: the maths runs on this page, and no values are stored or sent anywhere.

Enter the room, the sofa, the narrowest opening on the delivery route and what will face the sofa. The checker reports the depth budget, the walkway left on each side, the rug size the sofa points at, and whether it will get through the door. The maths runs in your browser as you type, nothing is stored and nothing is sent anywhere. It works from rectangles, so treat the output as a planning figure rather than a survey.

What the checker measures, and from which face#

Two dimensions, taken in the two directions of the room, and they are not interchangeable.

The length dimension is the one the sofa sits across. The checker divides the leftover width equally either side, (room width minus sofa length) / 2, which assumes the sofa is centred on its wall. If yours sits hard against one end, the whole leftover is on the other side and the figure to read is the total, not the per-side number.

The depth dimension runs away from the sofa into the room, and it is where the budget is spent. The sofa depth to enter is the overall depth of the piece including the back cushion and any roll at the arm, which is the figure in a catalogue, not the seat depth. The distinction matters because seat depth is 21 to 24 in (53 to 61 cm) on a piece whose overall depth is 38 in (97 cm), and the two are routinely confused. Both are set out in sofa dimensions.

The depth budget, worked once by hand#

Defaults: a 144 x 168 in (12 x 14 ft) room, an 84 x 38 in sofa, a media console opposite, a 32 in door.

1. Sofa depth: 38 in.
2. Gap to the coffee table: 17 in. That is the midpoint of the 16 to 18 in band explained in how far the coffee table should be from the sofa, and it is fixed in the tool.
3. Coffee table depth: 24 in, also fixed, which is the standard depth of a rectangular table.
4. Walkway behind the table: 30 in, added only because something faces the sofa.
5. The media console: 18 in.

Total 127 in of the 168 in room, so 41 in (104 cm) to spare. Across the room, (144 - 84) / 2 = 30 in each side, which clears the comfortable threshold.

Change one input and the answer moves sharply. Swap the console for a second sofa and the budget becomes 147 in, leaving 21 in. Swap it for two chairs at 34 in deep and it is 143 in. Choose the open wall and the budget collapses to 79 in, because both the walkway and the opposite piece leave the sum.

The walkway thresholds, and where they come from#

Those bands are trade practice rather than code inside a room, but they trace back to shoulder breadth and the width a person occupies while carrying something, and they line up with the figures in walkway and circulation widths at home. The 30 in walkway behind the coffee table is the one the checker protects, because it is usually the route between the door and the rest of the house.

Delivery, the rug and the coffee table#

Three checks run alongside the budget.

Delivery. If the narrowest opening is at least 2 in wider than the sofa depth, the sofa goes through flat on its side. Below that the tool tests the opening against 62 per cent of the sofa's end diagonal, sqrt(depth squared plus 34 squared), taking 34 in as a typical back height. For a 38 in deep sofa the diagonal is 51 in and the threshold is about 32 in, which is why a standard 32 in door is reported as tight rather than impossible. This is the tool's own working allowance for turning a rectangle through an opening at an angle, not a published rule, and it says nothing about the corner beyond the door. The full method, including the stair turn and the ceiling height at a half landing, is in measuring the delivery path, and leaf and clear widths are in door sizes, swings and the space they need.

Rug. The target is the sofa length plus 24 in, capped at the room width less 20 in, then matched to the nearest stocked size: 9 x 12 ft, 8 x 10 ft or 6 x 9 ft. The reasoning is in living room rug sizes and placement, and the full size chart is behind the rug size calculator.

Coffee table length. Half to two thirds of the sofa, so 42 to 56 in behind an 84 in sofa. Shapes, heights and the round alternative are covered in coffee table dimensions.

What the checker deliberately does not do#

• It does not model sectionals, chaise returns or corner units. Those change the shape of the budget, not just its size, and are covered in sectional sofa dimensions.
• It does not place the sofa in the room or check it against a door swing, a radiator, a chimney breast or a window sill.
• It does not check the conversation distance between facing seats, which has its own limits of 4 to 10 ft (1.2 to 3 m) in living room seating layout.
• It does not vary the coffee table depth or the gap, both of which are fixed constants in the arithmetic.
• It does not know your ceiling height, your stairs or the lift, all of which kill more deliveries than door width does.

The rest of the interior dimension calculators cover the pieces this one leaves out.