Will it fit through the door?
A sofa that fits the living room perfectly is still a return if it cannot get past the front door, round the hallway corner, or into the lift. The room is only half the question — the other half is the route in, and it is the half people measure last. Work out both on the same floor plan: upload your plan, set the scale once, and check the doorways and corridors your furniture has to travel through before you check where it lands.
Most delivery failures are not about the room at all. They happen at a 76 cm doorway, at the 90° turn between two narrow corridors, on a stair half-landing with a handrail, or at a lift door that is 20 cm narrower than the lift itself. The good news is that a doorway rarely stops furniture on width alone: a sofa goes through tilted, so what has to clear the opening is its depth or its height, not its length. Measure your own doorways and hallway widths on your plan — they are drawn to the same scale as everything else — then compare them against the numbers below. If the route is genuinely too tight, you usually find out that the answer is a smaller piece, a knock-down model that ships in parts, or removable legs, and you find it out before the delivery van is outside.
The route in: what each pinch point really measures
Furniture is sold by its own dimensions, never by the ones that decide whether it reaches the room. These are the six places a delivery actually fails, the size each one usually is, and the single number that settles it. Measure yours rather than trusting the table — building stock varies enormously — but use the last column to know what you are looking for.
| Pinch point | Typical size | The number that decides it | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Front / entrance door | Leaf 80–90 cm wide, 200 cm tall; clear opening 76–86 cm | The item's depth or its height — whichever is smaller — must clear the opening, because it goes through tilted, not flat | The frame, the stop and the hinges eat 2–4 cm off the leaf width. Weather-strip and a raised threshold take more. Doors that open outward onto a narrow landing may not open far enough to give you the full width |
| Interior doorway | Leaf 70–80 cm wide; clear opening 66–76 cm | Same tilt rule, but against a smaller number — this is where a 90 cm deep sofa stops | Bathroom and bedroom doors are routinely 70 cm. Take the door off its hinges and lift the leaf out of the way entirely; that is 4 cm plus the swing you no longer have to work around |
| Hallway corner (90° turn) | Corridors 90–120 cm wide meeting at a right angle | Depth, not length — a thin item up to about 2.5 m turns between two 90 cm corridors, a 90 cm deep one essentially cannot turn at all | This is where rigid pieces die: a 2 m worktop, a triple dresser, a hard-frame sofa. If the item can be tipped on end the constraint becomes ceiling height instead, which is usually the easier one to satisfy |
| Stairwell and half-landing | Flight 90–100 cm wide; landing 100–130 cm deep; headroom 200–220 cm | The landing depth plus the stair width — the piece has to complete its turn inside that L, upright | Handrails and newel posts take 8–10 cm off the usable width at exactly the height a sofa arm sits. Sloped ceilings over the landing cut the headroom you need to stand the piece up in the turn |
| Lift (elevator) | Car 100–110 cm wide × 130–140 cm deep × 210–230 cm high; door opening 70–80 cm | The door opening, not the car — the car is always the bigger of the two | A long item goes in diagonally or stood on end, so the car's diagonal and its height are what you actually have to work with. Older buildings and refits often have a car with no through-door, meaning the piece has to turn once inside |
| Balcony or window hoist (last resort) | Window opening 60–120 cm wide; balcony door 70–90 cm | The opening width with the sash fully open, plus clear ground below for the lift or crane | Only the outward-opening or removable-sash windows are usable, and most flats need permission plus a hoist crew. Price it before you assume it rescues an item the stairs rejected |
The quickest sanity check: take the item's smallest cross-section — depth × height for a sofa, width × depth for a wardrobe — and compare that pair against every opening on the route. If the smaller of the two clears the opening, it goes through tilted. If it does not, no amount of angling helps, and the honest answers are removable legs, a knock-down model that arrives in pieces, or a different piece. Draw your own doorways, hallway widths and the corner on your plan in ToScale so the route and the room are measured at the same scale, on the same drawing.
Frequently asked questions
- Will a sofa fit through a 76 cm (30 in) door?
- Usually yes. A sofa goes through a doorway tilted onto its side or back, so what has to clear the opening is the sofa's depth or its height — whichever is smaller — not its length. A sofa 90 cm deep and 85 cm tall clears a 76 cm door only if the arms or legs come off; one 75 cm deep goes through as it is.
- How do I measure a doorway for furniture?
- Measure the clear opening with the door open: frame edge to frame edge, and threshold to the underside of the frame. Ignore the door leaf size — the frame and stop take 2–4 cm off it. Removing the door from its hinges gives you roughly another 4 cm and removes the swing.
- What stops furniture more often — the door or the hallway corner?
- The corner. A doorway is a single flat opening you can tilt through, but a 90° turn between two narrow corridors constrains depth and length at the same time. Rigid pieces around 2 m long — worktops, triple dressers, hard-frame sofas — are the ones that fail there.
- Can I check the route in on my floor plan?
- Yes, and it is the same plan you use for the room. Set the scale once, then measure your doorways, corridor widths and the corner directly on the drawing, and place the furniture at true size to see the room and the route in one place.