How to draw a floor plan

A floor plan is a drawing of a space seen from above, with walls, doors and windows at their real sizes. You do not need special training to draw one, but you do need good measurements and a sensible order of work.

1. Sketch first, measure second

Walk through the home with paper and draw a rough sketch: every room, every door and window, roughly in the right place. It does not need to be to scale. This sketch is where you will write your measurements, and it stops you forgetting a cupboard or a short wall.

2. Measure every wall

Measure each wall from corner to corner, inside the room, at about waist height (skirting boards and cornices make the floor and ceiling less reliable). Write each number on the sketch next to its wall. Then measure:

• the position of each door and window from the nearest corner, and its width;
• the thickness of internal walls, which you can measure in a door opening;
• a diagonal of each room, to check that its corners really are square.

Our guide on how to measure a room goes through this in detail.

3. Draw the outside walls

Start with the largest room or the outline of the whole home. In Roomdraft, pick Walls, click the first corner and type the length of the first wall (for example 420, then Enter). Keep going corner by corner; clicking the first corner again closes the shape and the room appears with its floor area.

Work in the same direction as your sketch so the measurements follow on. A length you type while drawing runs along the middle of the wall; once the room is closed, click its inside length and type the size you measured, so the room matches your tape.

4. Add the internal walls

Draw each internal wall from one wall to another. Where it meets a wall, the two join automatically and new rooms appear. Set the thickness of internal walls to what you measured, often around 10 cm for a partition and more for a load-bearing wall.

5. Doors and windows

Add each door and window at its real width, then drag it along the wall until its position matches your measurement. Check which way each door opens: it matters for where furniture can go.

6. Check the plan against reality

Compare the room sizes and areas with your sketch. If a total does not add up, a wall is usually the wrong length or an internal wall the wrong thickness. Click any dimension to type a corrected length; connected walls follow.

7. Furnish and share

Add furniture at its real size to test layouts, name the rooms, and export the plan as a PDF at 1:50 or 1:100 if someone else needs to measure from it.

Common mistakes

• Measuring along the skirting board instead of the wall.
• Forgetting the wall thickness between rooms, which makes the whole plan too short.
• Drawing doors without their swing, then planning furniture where the door opens.