To measure your room for a chaise sofa, work through six checks: the overall floor area, the wall run where the sofa will sit, the chaise projection into the room, the walkways you need to keep clear, the position of doors, windows and radiators, and the delivery route into the house. Record everything in centimetres and add a little tolerance to each figure. A chaise sofa is more sensitive to measurement than a standard sofa because the extended section projects into the room and cannot be rotated once the orientation is set.
Use a metal tape measure rather than a fabric one, since fabric stretches and gives inconsistent readings. Measure twice at each point and write both figures down. Work in centimetres to match how furniture dimensions are published in the UK.
Build in tolerance. Upholstered furniture is made to nominal sizes and can vary by a couple of centimetres, and skirting boards, uneven walls and thick carpets all steal space. Allowing 5cm beyond your calculated minimum costs you nothing and prevents an expensive disappointment on delivery day.
Take the length and width of the room at floor level, measuring wall to wall at the widest points. Then measure again at a few different positions along each wall, because rooms in older UK properties are rarely square and a bay or chimney breast changes the usable area considerably.
Sketch the room on paper and mark these figures on it. Add the fixed features: chimney breast depth, alcove widths, radiator positions and the swing of each door. This sketch becomes the reference for every decision that follows, and it is far more useful than trying to hold numbers in your head in a showroom.
Decide which wall the long section of the sofa will sit against and measure the clear run available. Subtract anything that intrudes: a radiator, a skirting pipe, a door architrave or a socket you need access to. What remains is your maximum sofa width, minus your tolerance.
Remember that published sofa widths are usually the widest point, which includes the arms. If you have 240cm of clear wall, a 230cm sofa leaves only 5cm at each end, which will look tight. Aim to leave at least 10cm to 15cm of breathing space where you can.
This is the step people miss. The chaise section extends into the room at a right angle to the main body, typically between 150cm and 180cm deep including the seat and back. Measure that distance out from the wall into the room and mark it on the floor with masking tape.
Stand back and look at what the tape covers. Does it cross a doorway? Does it reach past the coffee table position? Does it block the route to the window? The tape outline tells you in thirty seconds what a floor plan cannot. Do the same for the overall depth of the main body, usually 90cm to 100cm.
Comfortable circulation is what separates a room that works from one that merely fits. Allow 60cm minimum for a walkway that people pass through occasionally and 75cm to 90cm for a main route across the room. Between the sofa and a coffee table, 40cm to 45cm is comfortable: enough to walk past, close enough to reach a cup.
Check the space in front of the chaise too. You need room to swing your legs round when getting up, so avoid placing a table directly against the open end. If the room is tight, our modern nest of tables UK sale range offers surfaces you can separate when needed and tuck away afterwards.
Chaise sofas are sold as left hand facing or right hand facing, and the convention is not always the same between retailers, so confirm how the orientation is described before ordering. The simplest method is to stand facing the sofa from the front: note whether the chaise sits on your left or your right, then check that against the product description.
Place the chaise on the side away from the main entrance to the room, so you walk into the open seating rather than into the back of the extended section. Consider the window as well: the chaise is the part people lie on, and positioning it where the light falls makes it the seat everyone chooses. Also check that the sofa back will not cover a radiator, since that blocks heat output and can dry out upholstery over time.
The room can be right and the hallway still wrong. Measure the width and height of the front door, the internal doorways, the hallway at its narrowest point, and the turn at the bottom and top of any stairs. For stairwells, measure the ceiling height above the turn as well as the width.
Compare these to the sofa dimensions, remembering that furniture can be carried on its side, so the smallest cross section is the figure that matters. Chaise sofas are frequently delivered in two or more sections, which makes access much easier, but confirm this rather than assuming it. If access is genuinely restricted, a modular set is the safer route, since each unit travels separately. The modern corner sofas UK range includes sectional designs built with this in mind.
With your six figures recorded, you can shortlist accurately instead of guessing. Take the sketch with you, or keep a photograph of it on your phone, and check every candidate against it before falling for a photograph.
One last exercise is worth the effort: lay out the full footprint in masking tape, including the chaise, and live with it for a day. Walk the room, sit on a dining chair placed where the seat would be, and see whether the route to the kitchen still feels natural. If it does, you have your answer. You can then compare sizes across the modern sofa furniture UK sale range at Furniture in Fashion with confidence.
Ceiling height rarely causes a problem in the room itself, but it matters in stairwells and on landings where a sofa has to be tipped. Measure the vertical clearance at the tightest turn as well as the width.
Skirting board depth is another quiet obstacle. A sofa with a low, flush base cannot sit fully against the wall if the skirting is 2cm proud, which pushes the whole piece further into the room. Sofas on legs clear the skirting entirely, so this only affects platform designs.
Window sill height is worth noting if the sofa will sit under a window, since a back taller than the sill blocks light and can interfere with the curtain drop. And if you have a bay, measure the depth of the bay separately, as a chaise tucked into a bay often fits better than one placed along a straight wall.
Long narrow rooms suit a chaise placed at the far end, away from the door, so the projection sits in the quieter part of the space rather than across the route through it. Square rooms take a chaise more easily in a corner, where two walls contain it.
In a room with a chimney breast, the alcove beside it is often the natural home for the main body, with the chaise projecting into the open floor. Measure the alcove width carefully, because these vary within the same room in older houses. Where the door opens directly into the seating area, a chaise on the far side keeps the door swing clear.
Keep one written list rather than several scraps, and include the date you measured. Note the room length and width, the clear wall run, the chaise projection allowance, the walkway minimums, the doorway and hallway dimensions, and the stair turn. Photograph the sketch so it travels with you.
When comparing products, check whether the published depth includes the back cushions, as some listings quote frame dimensions only. If a figure is missing, ask rather than estimate. Two centimetres of assumption is how a sofa ends up blocking a door.
Allow for the full width of the main body plus a chaise projection of roughly 150cm to 180cm into the room, then add a walkway of at least 60cm on any side people pass. In practice most chaise sofas suit rooms of around 3.5 metres in the relevant direction.
Conventions vary, so always confirm with the retailer. The clearest way to describe it is to stand in front of the sofa looking at the seat and say which side the chaise is on from that viewpoint.
Yes, and it works well in open plan spaces where the chaise marks the edge of the seating zone. Keep the back tidy and low, and allow walking space behind it.
Between 40cm and 45cm is comfortable for most people. Less than 35cm makes it awkward to pass, and more than 50cm puts the table out of easy reach.
Check whether the model arrives in sections or has removable legs and arms, as both reduce the cross section considerably. A modular design is the most reliable solution for restricted access.
Storage built into a corner sofa can remove the need for a separate box entirely,…
In an open plan living room a corner sofa works hardest as a room divider,…
Five seater corner sofas are comfortable when the seat depth, cushion construction and frame support…
A console table placed behind or beside a corner sofa solves several problems at once:…
Pairing a coffee table with a corner sofa is mostly a question of proportion: length…
A limited budget does not have to mean a disappointing corner sofa, provided the money…
This website uses cookies.