How do I mark load-bearing walls on my own floor plan?
No app can look at a scan and decide whether a wall is load-bearing. But once you've found out yourself — from a surveyor, a structural engineer or an old set of drawings — you can mark it on your floor plan, so it's clear the next time you plan a renovation.
Short answer: you can mark a wall as load-bearing in a floor-plan app, so the marking shows up clearly every time you open the drawing — but the app hasn't decided that itself. It just reflects your own decision back to you, consistently, across the 2D plan, the 3D model and any drawing you share with a contractor. The actual assessment of whether a wall bears load always comes from outside the app: a surveyor, a structural engineer, old building drawings, or the public building register.
Why bother marking it, when you already know?
Because you forget. You get the answer from a surveyor today, and you might plan a renovation two years from now. Without a marking on the drawing, you have to remember — or dig the paperwork back out — every single time the question comes up: "was it this wall, or the one next to it?" A marking directly on the drawing removes that uncertainty. It's the same principle as writing a note on a paper drawing by hand, just digital and visible every time you open the file.
What a marking actually is — and what it isn't
A marking is a visual note. It says "this wall has been assessed and found load-bearing" — not "this wall is load-bearing, because the app worked it out". The difference matters: an app doesn't know the building's foundations, its roof structure, or which beams rest on what. That's information no scan can contain, however precise it is. A LiDAR scan measures where surfaces are — not what they carry.
Who can actually decide whether a wall is load-bearing?
- A surveyor or structural engineer who inspects the house. They can trace the load from roof to foundation and see where it passes through.
- The original building drawings. Load-bearing walls are often marked with a particular line or hatching — but the drawings have to match the actual building, if it has been altered since.
- The direction of the joists. A wall the joists rest on typically carries something; a wall the joists run parallel to less often does — but that's an indication, not proof, and still calls for a professional's final say.
- Material and thickness alone don't tell you enough. A thick wall can be non-load-bearing, and in rare cases a thin wall can be part of the load-bearing structure. Thickness is a hint, not an answer.
What happens to the marking on a shared wall?
A load-bearing wall between two rooms is load-bearing seen from both rooms — it's a property of the structure, not of one side of it. So it makes sense that marking one side "load-bearing" automatically shows on the other side of the same physical wall too, unlike colour or material, which can rightly differ from side to side. That's a different logic from choosing a colour, and a good app should tell the two apart.
Why mark it before you plan a renovation
The moment a wall is being considered for removal or relocation, the marking is the first thing a contractor or structural engineer asks about. If you can show them a drawing where it's already noted, you save a round of questions — and the risk that someone assumes a wall is light because it looks thin in a photo. It's also worth having in place when you ask for a quote: a contractor who knows up front that a wall is load-bearing can give a more accurate estimate of what removing it will take in temporary support along the way.
What the marking doesn't excuse you from
Marking a wall as load-bearing — or not — on a drawing is not a building permit, and it's not a guarantee. Assessments can be wrong, houses can be altered without the drawings being updated, and a wall that looked non-load-bearing 20 years ago may well have taken on a new role after an earlier renovation. A marking on a drawing is a tool for remembering a decision — not a substitute for asking again if there's the slightest doubt, especially before anything is actually removed.
A concrete example
Imagine a house where a surveyor has assessed that the wall between the kitchen and the living room is load-bearing, while the wall between the living room and the utility room isn't. Without a marking on the drawing, you risk that information only living in your head, or in an email thread that gets buried a year later. With a marking, anyone who opens the drawing — you, a new contractor, a prospective buyer — can see at a glance which of the two walls needs support if it's going to come down.
What does it cost to get the assessment done before you mark anything?
The price of a surveyor's assessment of individual walls varies a lot, depending on whether it's a short visit to answer a couple of questions or a full condition survey of the whole house. A narrow question — "are these two walls load-bearing" — is typically cheaper than a full walkthrough, because the job is smaller. If you're already in the middle of a larger renovation, it can often pay to have the whole house assessed at once, so you don't have to bring a professional back out for every new wall you later consider changing.
Why a digital marking beats a note or a memory
A note can go missing, and a memory can mix up which wall was which — especially in a house with several identical rooms, or several renovations over the years. A marking tied directly to the geometric wall on the drawing doesn't drift if you later correct the drawing, and it doesn't disappear if you switch phones or share the file with a new contractor. That makes it a more robust place to keep information you only get to gather once, but need to be able to find again many times over.
What HouseSense does
In HouseSense, you can mark a wall as load-bearing yourself in editing mode — tap the wall and choose "Load-bearing". The app never decides this on its own; the marking is your own assessment, laid onto the drawing as a visible layer. If the wall is shared between two rooms, the marking mirrors to the other side, because it's the same physical structure. The marking travels with the drawing when it's shared or exported, so a contractor sees exactly the same information you do.
How to use the marking responsibly
- Only mark what you actually know. A guess marked as fact is worse than no marking at all.
- Write down the date and the source somewhere — outside the drawing. "Surveyor, March 2024" is worth being able to point back to later.
- Ask again if a lot of time has passed, or the house has since been renovated. An old assessment isn't automatically still correct.
- Never let a marking stand alone at the moment of removal. Even a wall marked "non-load-bearing" should be checked by a structural engineer before it's actually taken out — load paths can surprise you.