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Will my sofa fit through the door?

Enter your sofa’s measurements and the doorway it has to go through. The calculator checks whether it fits carried flat, tilted back, stood on its end or hooked round the frame, and whether it can turn the corner out of a hallway.

Cartoon: two people wedge a sofa on a staircase while a third shouts “Pivot!” PIVOT!
Measure first, and nobody has to shout “pivot”.
Units Units
Sofa
Doorway

Your result

Fill in the sofa and doorway sizes, then press Check the fit.

A guide, not a guarantee: allow for door handles, banisters, skirting and the people carrying it. Within 2 cm (about ¾ in) we call it tight.

Updated

How to measure a sofa and a doorway

  1. Sofa length: the widest point, usually arm to arm.
  2. Depth: from the front of the arm or seat to the back, at the deepest point.
  3. Height: from the floor to the top of the back cushions or frame.
  4. Diagonal depth: lay a straight edge from the top of the back to the front of the arm. Measure from the bottom back corner of the sofa up to the straight edge at a right angle. This is the thinnest the sofa gets when tilted back.
  5. Arm height and back thickness, only if the calculator asks: floor to the top of the arm, and how thick the back is at the arm, frame and cushion.
  6. Doorway clear width: open the door fully and measure from the door stop (or the face of the open door) to the opposite frame. Not the door itself.
  7. Doorway height: from the floor to the underside of the frame.
  8. Hallway width: wall to wall, if you have to turn the sofa from a hallway into the door.

Moving a sofa up stairs, through a lift or round more than one corner? Our guide to measuring the whole route has a worked example.

Standard door sizes

The clear opening is always less than the door itself, because the open door and its stops take up space. Typical figures:

CountryCommon doorTypical clear openingHeight
UK, internal762 mm (2′ 6″)about 70–72 cm (27½–28¼ in)1981 mm (6′ 6″)
UK, front door838 mm (2′ 9″)about 77–79 cm (30¼–31 in)1981–2032 mm
US, interior30 or 32 in (76 or 81 cm)about 28–30 in (71–76 cm)80 in (203 cm)
US, exterior36 in (91 cm)about 33–34 in (84–86 cm)80 in (203 cm)
Australia, internal820 mm (32¼ in)about 76–78 cm (30–30¾ in)2040 mm (80¼ in)

Always measure your own doors: older homes and flats often have narrower ones.

Four ways a sofa gets through a door

ROOMHALLWAY
Flat: carried length first, upright or on its back. Fits if the smaller of its depth and height is narrower than the door.
Tilted: leaned back so the thinnest part, the diagonal depth, goes through first. This is how most deep sofas get into a room.
flat: too long to turn ROOM
On its end: stood up with the length vertical. Only works if the sofa is shorter than the door is tall, but it makes tight hallway turns much easier.
ROOMHALLWAY open door
Hooked: on its end, back first through the door, then pivot round the frame and the arm follows. Seen from above the sofa is an L, so at the door it’s only as wide as the diagonal from the back’s rear corner to where the arm meets the back. It needs low enough arms and room to swing on both sides: the open door, a radiator or a wall in the way will stop it.

How the hallway turn is worked out

Turning a long object round a right-angled corner is a classic geometry problem. For a hallway of width a, a doorway of width b and a sofa of thickness w, the longest sofa that can be carried flat round the corner is the smallest value of a/sin θ + b/cos θ − w/(sin θ cos θ) over all angles θ. The calculator works this out for your numbers. Real moves can do better by lifting one end, which is why it also checks standing the sofa on its end.

If it won’t fit

  • Take the door off its hinges, which usually gains 3–5 cm (1–2 in).
  • Remove the sofa’s feet and any detachable arms or back cushions.
  • Ask your removal company whether a window or patio door is an option.
  • Look for a sofa that comes in sections, or one with removable arms. Some furniture repairers will dismantle and rebuild a sofa in the room.

Once it’s through the door, check it fits the room too. Draw the room and drop the sofa in to see how it sits next to everything else, and look at typical sofa sizes or how much space to leave around it.