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Will it fit?

Type the room you have and the thing you are thinking of buying, then drag it around a plan drawn to your own measurements. The gaps are measured as you move it, so you find out where the problem is, not just that there is one.

A tape measure and a rectangle is not the whole answer

Most things fit. A 72 inch table goes into a 10 foot room with room to spare, on paper. What decides it is the space around the thing: whether a chair pulls out, whether you can get past someone sitting in it, whether the treadmill has run-off behind the belt, whether the bed leaves you a way to the wardrobe.

So each planner here measures two outlines. The solid one is the object. The dashed one is the space it needs kept clear. Push through the solid one and the answer is no. Push into the dashed one and the answer is "yes, but tight". That is a different problem, and often one you would choose to live with.

table nowhere for a chair to go
  • The table itself
  • The space its chairs need
  • Your walls
The table fits with room around it. The chair space does not — it runs past the left wall. That gap between the two is where "tight" and "doesn't fit" part company.

Drawn to your room, not to a diagram

The plan is the calculator. Drag the object where you actually want it and the wall gaps update as it moves. Turn it and see whether a different orientation buys you anything. Nothing on the drawing is illustrative: every line is at your scale, and the verdict is read off the same geometry.

If you would rather not drag anything, every position, size and angle has a box you can type into, and the objects can be moved with the arrow keys.

Where the clearance numbers come from

Each planner shows you the clearance it is using and lets you change it. Most of these figures are trade conventions rather than rules — 24 inches to pull a dining chair out, 36 inches for a main walking route — and they are listed with their origins on the sources page. If your chairs are bigger, type a bigger number and watch the answer move.

The full method, and a plain list of what these planners do not know about, is on the methodology page.

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