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Can I type in furniture measurements manually instead of scanning?

Yes. Most of the furniture measurements you need are already on the price tag or the product's website — width and depth are enough to plan with, and you can often skip the height entirely.

Why width and depth are the measurements that matter

A floor plan seen from above shows furniture as flat rectangles — that's how an architect's drawing has always shown fixtures, because those are the two measurements that decide whether something can stand in the room. Height is irrelevant to whether the sofa fits between two walls; it only starts to matter once you want to see the piece in 3D, fit it under a sloped ceiling, or hang it on a wall like a TV.

So typing the measurements in by hand isn't a workaround — it's actually the same information a scan ultimately boils down to.

Where to find the measurements without owning the piece yet

• The product page. Almost every furniture retailer lists width, depth and height in centimetres under the product description.
• The price tag in the shop. The three measurements are often printed in small type right below the price.
• Ask a member of staff. If the item has a product number, staff can usually look it up on the spot even if the tag is missing.
• An old piece you already own. Here a tape measure is still fastest — two measurements take ten seconds.

Converting centimetres in the shop to metres in the app

Furniture shops almost always quote measurements in centimetres (e.g. "W 210 × D 95 × H 78 cm"), while a floor plan works in metres. Move the decimal point two places: 210 cm becomes 2.10 m, 95 cm becomes 0.95 m. The most common mistake is forgetting the conversion and typing "210" where the app expects metres — the piece then ends up 100 times too big on the drawing, and you usually don't spot it until the sofa fills the whole house.

Do you need to know the height?

No, not to get the piece onto the floor plan. Height is only used when the piece is shown in 3D or placed somewhere the height makes a difference — for example under a sloped ceiling, where you need to know whether the cabinet can stand there without hitting the ceiling, or on a wall, where a TV or shelving unit needs to hang at a specific height above the floor. If you don't have the number, a sensible default height draws the piece in 3D so you can still see it, while the flat marker on the floor plan itself stays unchanged.

If you're placing something under a sloped ceiling or up against a ceiling with limited headroom, though, the height is no longer optional — there you should find the real number, because a default height can easily be off by 10-20 cm, and that's enough to decide whether the piece fits or not.

What you lose by not scanning the piece

A scan captures the furniture's actual shape — an L-shaped sofa, an angled edge, a table with rounded corners. A manual entry always draws a clean rectangle based on width and depth, regardless of the piece's real shape. For most furniture that makes no practical difference, because the flat rectangle is precisely the convention floor plans use. But if the piece is very irregularly shaped — a chaise-longue sofa, a round dining table — the rectangle only represents the piece's outer dimensions, not its actual silhouette. That's still enough to decide whether there's room, but not enough to see the exact shape.

When manual entry makes the most sense

• You're planning a purchase you haven't seen yet. The piece is sitting in a shop or on a website you can't scan yet.
• The piece is already home but hard to scan. Wedged into a corner, covered in clothes, or in a room with no space to walk around it.
• You don't have a LiDAR phone. Scanning individual furniture requires LiDAR (Pro models of iPhone and iPad only); manual entry requires nothing special.
• You just want to work it out quickly. Two numbers and a name are faster than walking over to the piece with the phone.

When a scan is better

If you have the piece in front of you, a LiDAR phone in hand, and a piece with an irregular shape, a scan gives a more accurate picture — and saves you looking up measurements. For standard furniture like a rectangular dining table or an ordinary sofa, the two methods do the same job; the only difference is whether you'd rather walk over to the piece or type two numbers in from the sofa on the screen.

Common pitfalls

• Width and depth swapped. A coffee table can easily be wider than it is deep — check which number belongs to which term in the product description.
• Measurements with or without armrests. Some manufacturers quote the piece's outer dimensions including loose armrests or cushions, others only the frame itself. Stick with the larger number if you're unsure — better to plan with too much space than too little.
• Forgetting to convert centimetres to metres. See the section above — that's the mistake most likely to leave you with a furniture piece in a wildly wrong size.

Can you correct a measurement afterwards?

Yes, and it's often necessary. A measurement taken from a product page is the manufacturer's number, not necessarily what ends up standing in your living room — furniture can deviate a few centimetres from the stated measurement, and a delivery can turn out to be a different model than you thought. If the app lets you correct a piece that's already been added, it's worth doing as soon as the piece is in the home and you can take a quick check measurement — that way the floor plan matches reality the next time you plan something new in the same room.

A worked example: two sofas, the same spot

You're weighing up two sofa models for the same wall. One is listed as W 220 × D 90 cm, the other W 235 × D 95 cm. Typed in as 2.20 × 0.90 m and 2.35 × 0.95 m, you can see straight away that the 15 cm difference in width either leaves good room for a floor lamp in the corner, or fills the wall almost entirely. That's the kind of decision two typed-in numbers settle just as well as a full scan — you don't need to own the piece to know whether it fits.

What HouseSense does

In HouseSense you can add a piece of furniture with a name, a width and a depth in metres — height is optional, and without it the piece is drawn with a default height in 3D. The piece joins your library the same way a scanned piece would, and can then be dragged onto the floor plan, rotated and moved around until it fits. The feature needs nothing beyond the app itself — no LiDAR, no scanning.

Decision: scan it, or type it in

1. Do you have the piece in front of you and a LiDAR phone? Scan it — it's faster and captures the actual shape.
2. Are you planning a purchase you haven't seen yet? Look up the measurements on the product page, and type them in.
3. Will the piece stand under a sloped ceiling or close to the ceiling? Find the real height measurement — a guessed default isn't good enough here.
4. Not sure whether a measurement includes armrests or cushions? Use the larger number you can find.