Step by step
How to draw a floor plan to scale
Five steps, in the browser, with nothing to install. At the end you have a drawing that is also a measurement — which is what every quantity after it comes from.
Free to use. No sign-up needed to draw. What the floor planner measures →
- 1
Draw the outline
Pick Room for a rectangle, or Draw zone to click corner to corner for an L-shape.
- ·Room stays armed, so you can lay out several in a row.
- ·Draw zone finishes on a double-click, on Enter, or on Close zone once you have three corners.
- ·A corner that lands on another room’s wall splits that wall, so adjoining rooms share it.
- ·Esc cancels whatever is armed. Right-click removes the last corner.
- 2
Set the lengths exactly
Type a number while you are drawing and press Enter. The next corner lands that far along.
- ·A teal pill shows what you are typing. Backspace edits it.
- ·On a wall you have already placed, click its length label and type the real one.
- ·The typed length keeps the wall’s own bearing. A wall drawn at 30° stays at 30°.
- 3
Square it up
Snap to 45° keeps new walls honest while you draw. Straighten fixes a room after.
- ·The snap is a tolerance, not a rounding: it pulls to 45° only when you are within a few degrees.
- ·Straighten squares the selected room’s corners and keeps the angle it was drawn at. A wall deliberately set at an angle is left alone.
- ·Drag any corner handle to move it. The walls either side follow, so the room stays closed.
- ·The Grid dropdown changes the dots you see. Drawing snaps to the grid step either way.
- 4
Add the doors and windows
Pick Door, Window or Opening, then click the wall. They come off the wall area.
- ·Defaults are 0.9 × 2.1 m for a door, 1.2 × 1.2 m for a window with a 0.9 m sill. Resize after placing.
- ·Door styles: single, double, sliding, folding. Windows: fixed, casement, bay.
- ·This is the step that makes net wall area mean anything — it is what you buy paint and boards against.
- 5
Read the measurements
Floor area, net wall area and perimeter appear as you draw. Nothing is measured twice.
- ·The Measure tool gives an ad-hoc distance between any two points. Those marks are not saved.
- ·Floor tabs hold up to five storeys. Double-click to rename, drag to reorder.
- ·A free plan holds two closed rooms. A whole flat needs a paid plan.
What a drawn room gives you
Type a room you know. These are the same four numbers the planner reads off every room you draw, and the reason no step after this one needs a tape measure.
Your room
Flooring, tiling, screed, levelling compound, underfloor heating
Skirting, coving, edge trim, the bottom plate of a stud wall
Before the openings come off
What paint, plasterboard, insulation and wallpaper are bought against
Ceiling finishes, and the height every wall calculation uses
1 door at 0.90 m × 2.10 m and 2 windows at 1.20 m × 1.20 m come off the gross wall area — the planner's own default sizes, and every opening is resizable there.
Keyboard, in full
| Click | Place a corner |
| Double-click | Close the room |
| 3.5 then Enter | Exact length while drawing |
| Right-click | Delete the last corner, or cancel |
| Alt + click a wall | Add a door or window there |
| Space + drag | Pan. Scroll to zoom. |
| M | Measure tool |
| Esc | Cancel or deselect |
Then what
A drawn room is not the point on its own. The next step is saying what you are doing to each surface, and that is where the measurements turn into quantities and a cost.
What you will be measuring for
Each of these explains the build-up behind a surface, and the waste it carries.
Common questions
How do you draw a floor plan to scale?
Draw each room roughly, then set the real lengths. In this planner you type a number while drawing and press Enter, or click a finished wall’s length label and type over it. Working that way means the drawing is the measurement, rather than a sketch you then have to measure.
Do you need the floor plan to be accurate?
Accurate enough that the quantities are right, which means walls within a few centimetres and openings roughly where they are. Materials are bought in whole units — packs, tins, boards — so small errors usually round away. An error of half a metre in a room length does not.
What is net wall area?
Gross wall area is perimeter times height. Net is that minus the doors and windows. Net is the number materials are bought against, because nobody paints a doorway. The planner shows both, and the subtraction, so you can see where the figure came from.
Can you draw an L-shaped room?
Yes — use Draw zone rather than Room and click each corner in turn. The rectangle tool is only a shortcut for the common case. You can also draw a rectangle and split it, or drag a corner afterwards.
Does it work on a phone?
The floor planner does. Snap targets are larger on a touch screen and a cancel button appears while a tool is armed. The 3D builder is laptop-only, by a deliberate check — placing timber in 3D needs the room a laptop has.
Free to try — no sign-up, nothing to install. Measuring a plan online →