Room Measure

Most people measure furniture and ask one question: will it fit?

That is the wrong first question. A sofa can fit the room and still make it feel tight. A dining table can fit the corner and still make every chair a negotiation. The room already has rules before any furniture arrives, and those rules decide what will work.

This workbook walks you through measuring one room properly, then testing a layout on paper, before you spend money on anything.

What is inside

• How to measure a room properly. The order to work in, and the four errors that ruin a plan.
• A room record you fill in on site. Dimensions, ceiling height, door swings, windows, outlets, radiators, and the route the furniture has to travel to get in.
• A nine-shot photo checklist, with the reason each shot matters.
• The clearance numbers that decide whether a room feels right. 36 inches on the path people walk. 36 to 42 at a dining table. 16 to 20 between sofa and coffee table. 12 to 18 at the ends of a wall piece.
• Two scaled plan grids at 1/4 inch to the foot, 30 by 35 feet each. Real drafting scale, not decorative graph paper.
• 32 furniture cut-outs at matching scale. Cut them out, move them around, find the arrangement before you buy it.
• Six questions to ask your plan, and five layout mistakes with the reason each one fails.

Who it is for

• You are about to buy furniture and you want to be sure before it arrives.
• You are planning a room and the layout is the part you keep going in circles on.
• Your room feels crowded and you cannot work out why.
• Not for you if you want a decorating mood board. This is about space and how you move through it.

Where this comes from

Tenonfold is made by Tyheem Joiner, a designer who spends his working life measuring rooms and drawing them accurately. That is why this workbook starts with the walking path and the fixed elements instead of the cushions, and why the grid is drawn at the scale a real drawing uses rather than an approximation of it.