Will My Furniture Fit in My New Apartment?
Plan the new place before moving day, with the furniture you own and the pieces you still need
You know your furniture fits where you live now. The new apartment is a different shape, with doors, windows and radiators in different places, and moving day is a bad moment to find out what does not work.
Picture the sofa that sat happily along the long wall of your old living room. In the new one, the only wall long enough has the balcony door in it. You can find that out with a tape measure and twenty minutes now, or with two movers waiting in the hallway.
This guide is the first way. It works whether you are taking everything, almost nothing, or have not decided yet.
The short version
Seven things to do before moving day:
- Get the shape of the new apartment: the listing floor plan, or your own measurements.
- Mark the things that cannot move: doors, windows, radiators, sockets.
- Measure the furniture you own.
- Place it in the new rooms, on a plan.
- Decide per piece: keep, sell or replace.
- Add the pieces you are thinking of buying, check those too, and see old and new side by side.
- Check the way in: entrance, elevator or stairs, hallway, front door.
The rest of this page goes through them one at a time.
1. Get the shape of the new apartment
Start with whatever you have. A floor plan from the listing or the agent is enough for a first draft. Treat it as an estimate: room sizes on a listing are usually rounded, and the drawing is often not exact. How to plan furniture from an apartment floor plan covers how to read one and what it leaves out.
If you can get into the apartment, measure the width and length of each room and the ceiling height. If you only have a few minutes there, the living room and the main bedroom matter most, because that is where the big pieces go.
If you have a viewing coming up, what to measure at an apartment viewing lists what to get in twenty minutes, in order of importance. For how to take each measurement properly, see what to measure before buying furniture.
2. Mark the things that cannot move
The room decides some things for you. Note where these are, measured from a corner:
- Doors, and which way they open. A door needs its whole swing clear.
- Windows, and how high the sill is if anything is going under it.
- Radiators. Furniture pushed against one blocks the heat and loses you a few inches of depth.
- Sockets and the TV or internet connection. They often decide where the desk and the TV end up.
Take a photo of each wall while you are there. You will want to check something later, and a photo answers it faster than a second visit.
3. Measure the furniture you own
Measure the pieces themselves instead of looking up the model. You need width and depth at the widest point for everything large: sofa, bed, wardrobe, dining table, desk, dresser, bookcases. Add the height for anything that might go under a window or a sloped ceiling.
Two that people often miss: a wardrobe needs room for its doors to open, and a dining table needs room for the chairs to be pulled out.
Write the sizes down in one list. You will use it again when you book a truck.
4. Place it in the new rooms
Now put the two together. You can do this on graph paper, or with painter's tape on the floor if you already have the keys. Taping a sofa's outline on the actual floor tells you a lot in a minute.
To do it before you have the keys, use a plan at real scale. In Nooked you draw the new rooms, or trace the listing floor plan, and then add what you own: pick the closest shape from the catalog and set it to your piece's real size, or upload a photo of it and type the size. Any gap that is too tight is marked on the plan, so you see the problem while it is still a drawing.
Place the largest piece in each room first. Everything else goes around it.
These are the gaps to check, as guidelines:
| Gap |
Tight but workable |
Comfortable |
| Walkway through a room |
2 ft (60 cm) |
3 ft (90 cm) |
| Sofa to coffee table |
12 in (30 cm) |
18 in (45 cm) |
| Beside a bed, to get in |
18 in (45 cm) |
24 in (60 cm) |
| Behind a dining chair |
24 in (60 cm) |
30 in (75 cm) |
| In front of a wardrobe |
2 ft (60 cm) |
3 ft (90 cm) |
5. Decide per piece: keep, sell or replace
Once everything is on the plan, each piece lands in one of three groups:
- It fits with comfortable gaps. It is coming.
- It fits, but tight. Try it against another wall or in another room before deciding. A sofa that crowds the living room is sometimes right for a study or a bedroom.
- It does not fit anywhere. Better to know now. Selling or giving away a piece before the move saves carrying it twice.
Only fit is being judged here. Whether you like the piece is your call. If two of you are combining furniture, see moving in together. For the rest of the decision, such as whether a piece is worth the cost of moving, see keep, sell or replace.
If you are keeping most of what you own and building the rooms around it, how to design a room around furniture you already own goes deeper on that.
6. Add the pieces you are thinking of buying
A move usually comes with a shopping list: a bigger table, a bed for the spare room, a desk now that there is space for one. Check those against the same plan before ordering, next to the furniture that is coming with you. If the budget does not stretch to everything at once, what to buy first for a new apartment puts it in order.
In Nooked, paste the link to the product page and the piece is placed at its real size in the room, beside your own. If you are choosing between two, you can compare furniture side by side with their sizes and whether each fits.
See the old and the new together
Fit is one question. Whether the new table works with the chairs you are keeping is another, and it is easier to answer when you can see them side by side.
Take a photo of each piece you are keeping and put it on a furniture moodboard next to the pieces you are thinking of buying. In Nooked you upload the photo, the background can be removed, and your own sofa sits on the same board as the rug and the armchair from the shop. You can also see color palettes that go with a piece you own, read from its photo.
Nooked does not tell you what looks good. It puts everything in one place so you can judge for yourself, before anything is ordered.
Order big pieces with the delivery time in mind. Some sofas and beds take weeks to arrive, so they are worth ordering before the move, once you know they fit.
7. Check the way in
A piece that fits the room still has to get there. Walk the route from the street to the room and measure the narrowest points:
- The building entrance and your front door. Measure the clear opening, not the door itself.
- The elevator: inside width, depth and height. This is often the tightest point in an apartment building.
- Stairs and landings, especially where the stairs turn.
- Hallway corners inside the apartment.
Ask the building about move-in rules while you are at it: whether the elevator has to be reserved, and where a truck can stop.
For the numbers and how to check a specific piece, see will furniture fit through my doorway.
What you end up with
A plan of the new apartment with every large piece in its place, a short list of what is not coming, and a list of what to buy with sizes you know will fit. On moving day, each piece is carried once, to the right room, and nobody stands in the hallway holding a wardrobe while you think.
For everything else that has to happen around the move, from giving notice to the first week, see the moving apartment checklist. For packing, the moving tips on packing and labeling will save you time at the other end.
Common questions
- How do I know if my furniture will fit in my new apartment?
- Compare two sets of numbers: the size of each room, with its doors, windows and radiators marked, and the width and depth of each large piece you own. Then place the pieces on a plan of the new rooms and check the gaps around them. A piece fits when it leaves a walkway of about 2 ft (60 cm) or more and no door is blocked.
- Can I plan from the floor plan in the listing?
- Yes, as a first draft. A listing floor plan is usually close, but it is an estimate, and it often leaves out radiators, sockets and which way the doors swing. Use it to see what is likely to work, then check the walls that matter with a tape measure at the viewing or on the day you get the keys.
- Should I measure my furniture or look up the model online?
- Measure it. It takes a few minutes per piece, and the number you get is the piece you own, including arms, feet and anything that sticks out at the back. Write down width and depth for everything large, and height for anything that goes under a window or a sloped ceiling.
- What if my sofa does not fit in the new living room?
- Try it against a different wall first, since most rooms have more spare space in one direction than the other. If that does not work, check whether it suits another room. If it still does not fit, you now know the exact width that will, which makes choosing a replacement much easier.
- How much space should I leave around furniture?
- As a guideline, about 2 ft (60 cm) is the narrowest walkway that works and about 3 ft (90 cm) is comfortable for a main route through a room. Between a sofa and a coffee table, 12 to 18 in (30 to 45 cm) usually works. These are guidelines, so check them against how you use the room.
- When should I start planning the new apartment?
- As soon as you have a floor plan or your own measurements, and ideally before you book movers or a truck. Knowing which pieces are coming tells you how big a truck you need and what to sell or give away before the move, which is easier than doing it after.
All guides · Check your own room