How to measure a kitchen for planning

Before you start

You need a steel tape at least 5 m long, something to write on, and ideally a second person to hold the other end. A phone camera is worth having: photograph every wall straight on before you start, and every pipe and socket you find. Write the unit at the top of the sheet and use it for everything; mixing centimetres and millimetres on one page is how a 60 becomes a 600.

Measure between the finished faces of the walls, plaster or tile, not to the brick. If the room is being replastered or tiled, add the thickness of what is coming, or measure again afterwards before anything is ordered.

1. Sketch the room from above

Draw the outline of the room as if looking down from the ceiling. It does not have to be to scale. Mark which wall is which: in the planner the back wall is the one you face when you walk in, left and right are as you look at it, and the front wall is the one with the door behind you. Mark every door, window and opening roughly where it is. Everything you measure from now on is written on this sketch.

2. Wall lengths, twice

Measure each wall at worktop height, about 900 mm up, and again at the floor. Walls lean and skirting boards stick out, and the plan needs the tighter of the two. Then measure the two diagonals, corner to corner across the floor. If they differ by more than about 20 mm the room is out of square; note it, because the last cabinet in a run will need a filler panel to take up the difference.

3. Ceiling height

Measure floor to ceiling in three places and keep the lowest. Note any bulkhead, beam or boxed-in pipe, with its depth and where it starts and stops: a 2100 mm tall unit or a hood flue has to clear it. If the floor is not yet laid, add the thickness of the floor that is coming, since every height on the plan is measured from the finished floor.

4. Doors and windows

For each opening, measure from the nearest corner to the edge of the frame, then the width of the opening frame to frame, then its height. For a window also measure the sill height from the floor and note which way it opens; for a door note which side the hinges are on and whether it swings into the room. The planner asks for exactly these four numbers, offset, width, height and sill, and draws the swing so that a cabinet cannot block it.

5. Things that will not move

Radiators, soil pipes, a boiler, an electrical panel, a column, a low window: measure their position from the nearest corner, their height from the floor and their size. Then find the existing service points, water supply and drain, gas, sockets and the extract duct if there is one, and record each with its height. The cheapest kitchen keeps the sink near the drain and the hob near the gas; knowing where they are lets the plan use them.

6. Appliances you keep

A fridge you are keeping decides its own bay. Measure width, depth and height, including handles, and note which way its door opens. Do the same for any range, dishwasher or washing machine. The planner places every appliance at its real size, so enter your own sizes rather than the defaults for anything you already own.

7. Check the sums

Along each wall, the pieces should add up: corner to door frame, plus door width, plus door frame to the next corner, equals the wall length. If they do not, something was read wrong; measure that wall again before you leave the room. Then photograph the sheet.

Entering it into the planner

1. Start a project from the layout closest to your room, then open the Room tab and enter the width, depth and ceiling height. Choose your unit at the top of the editor.
2. Add each door and window on its wall with its offset from the corner, width, height and sill. The plan redraws as you type.
3. Add the existing service points at their heights, so the elevations show them and the layout checks can warn about a socket beside the hob.
4. Adjust the units to your room. The layout checks flag anything that no longer fits.

The worksheet

Print it, or copy the rows into a notebook. One sheet per room.