How to measure your kitchen

What you need

A 25-foot tape measure, a sheet of paper, and a pencil. A phone camera helps for photos afterward, and a second pair of hands makes long walls easier — but neither is required. You don't need a laser measure, and you don't need to know anything about cabinets.

One mindset note before you start: you are not producing construction documents. You're giving a designer an accurate picture of the room. Whichever shop builds the kitchen verifies every dimension on site before ordering anything — that's standard practice on every job, not a workaround for homeowner measurements.

Start with the big picture

Sketch the room's outline on your paper — a rough rectangle is fine, with bumps for any closets, pantries, or angled corners. Then take three numbers:

• Overall length: the longest wall-to-wall run, measured at counter height (about 36 inches off the floor), where cabinets actually live.
• Overall width: wall-to-wall the other way, same height.
• Ceiling height: floor to ceiling in a couple of spots — note it if they differ by more than an inch, which happens in older homes.

Measuring at counter height matters because walls are rarely perfectly straight: floor and ceiling measurements can differ from where the cabinets sit by enough to matter.

Walk the walls clockwise

Pick a corner and work clockwise, labeling walls A, B, C, D on your sketch. For each wall, record the full corner-to-corner run first. Then locate everything on that wall from the same starting corner, so all your numbers chain in one direction:

• Windows: distance from the corner to the window edge, the window's width, and its height off the floor — cabinets and sills negotiate for the same space.
• Doorways: distance from the corner, width including trim, and which way the door swings.
• Plumbing: center of the sink drain and supply lines.
• Range and gas line: center of the gas connection or the range's electrical outlet.
• Fridge water line, if there is one.
• Electrical: outlets and switches you know you want to keep, plus the panel if it's in the kitchen.
• Vents, radiators, and anything else that pokes out of a wall or floor.

A good self-check when a wall is done: the pieces should add up. Corner-to-window plus window plus window-to-corner should equal the full wall run, within an inch. If it doesn't, re-measure that wall — this catch-it-now habit is the single most valuable trick in the whole process.

The things people forget

A few items regularly go unmeasured and matter later:

• What stays: if the flooring, an appliance, or a radiator is staying, say so and measure it — designs are built around survivors.
• Soffits and bulkheads: measure their depth and height off the floor; they decide whether cabinets can run to the ceiling.
• Appliance sizes, if you're keeping them: width, depth, and height of the fridge and range.
• Obstructions at counter height: window sills lower than 36 inches, pipes in corners, wall unevenness you can see.

Accuracy, honestly

Round to the nearest inch, measure everything twice, and don't chase perfection past that. Designers work with sensible tolerances, and the shop's on-site verification before ordering is the real safety net — at anyroomdesign.com, small discrepancies found at verification are corrected in the design free of charge, without using a revision round.

When your sketch has a full wall run and located openings for each wall, plus overall dimensions and ceiling height, you're done. Take a few photos of each wall and the room's corners while the tape is still out — a designer reads photos and numbers together, and the pair is worth more than either alone.