To measure your room for a bedroom dresser, record the length of the wall you plan to use, the clear floor depth in front of it, the height available below any window or fitting, and the full route the dresser must travel to reach the room. Add at least 75cm of clear floor in front for open drawers, and check the doorway, stairs and landing before you order. Eight steps cover the whole process, and they take about fifteen minutes with a tape measure and a notepad.<\/p>\n
Most returns of large bedroom furniture come down to one missed measurement, and it is rarely the wall. It is the turn at the top of the stairs, the radiator that stops the unit sitting flush, or the drawer that opens into the bed. Work through the steps below and none of those will catch you out.<\/p>\n
A retractable metal tape measure of at least 5 metres, a pencil, paper and ideally a second person to hold the end of the tape. A phone note works, but a sketch is far easier to read when you are comparing product dimensions later.<\/p>\n
Write every measurement in centimetres. Furniture dimensions are almost always given in centimetres or millimetres in the UK, and mixing units is where mistakes creep in.<\/p>\n
Measure the full length of the wall where the dresser will sit, from corner to corner at floor level. Then measure again at the height the dresser top will reach, because older walls are rarely truly square and the two figures can differ by several centimetres.<\/p>\n
Use the smaller of the two figures. Then subtract at least 10cm to give breathing space at each side, unless you specifically want the piece to fill the wall exactly.<\/p>\n
Stand at the wall and measure straight out into the room to the nearest obstacle: the bed, a radiator, the door swing, or the opposite wall.<\/p>\n
You need the depth of the dresser itself plus the drawer extension plus standing room. A typical drawer pulls out between 40 and 50cm, and you need roughly another 30cm to stand comfortably in front of it. As a working rule, allow 75cm of clear floor in front of the dresser, and more if the room is a main thoroughfare.<\/p>\n
If that leaves you short, a shallower dresser or a taller narrow chest solves the problem. Both formats appear across our modern chest of drawers UK sale<\/a> range.<\/p>\n Measure from the floor to the underside of anything above: a windowsill, a wall mounted radiator, a light switch, a picture rail or a sloping ceiling.<\/p>\n Sitting a dresser below a windowsill keeps the window clear and the room bright, so the sill height is usually the number that matters. If one of our bedroom mirrors UK sale<\/a> is going above the dresser, measure the wall height available for both and check the combined height before ordering.<\/p>\n In a loft conversion, measure the ceiling height at the exact point the back of the dresser will stand, not in the middle of the room.<\/p>\n Walk the wall and record the position and projection of each of these:<\/p>\n Skirting is the one people forget. If a dresser cannot sit flat against the wall, it will project further into the room than the stated depth, which affects step 2.<\/p>\n Open the bedroom door fully and mark on your sketch the arc it travels. A dresser inside that arc will either stop the door opening or be struck by it.<\/p>\n Then check the walking route from the door to the bed and to the window. A clear path of around 60cm is comfortable. If the dresser reduces that below 50cm, the room will feel cramped regardless of how well the piece fits the wall.<\/p>\n This is the step that saves the most trouble. Measure, in order:<\/p>\n Compare these against the dresser’s boxed dimensions rather than its assembled dimensions, since flat packed furniture arrives in cartons that can be long and awkward even when the finished piece is modest. If the piece arrives assembled, the smallest opening on the route is your true limit.<\/p>\n Mark the footprint out with masking tape on the floor, including the drawer extension as a second rectangle in front. Live with it for a day.<\/p>\n This single exercise reveals things no measurement will: that the drawer clips the bed corner, that you cannot open the wardrobe at the same time, or that the dresser blocks the only patch of morning light. Cardboard cut to the top size and laid on the tape gives an even clearer sense of the visual bulk.<\/p>\n Finally, read the product listing carefully. Check the width, depth and height, and confirm whether the depth figure includes the handles, which can add 3 to 5cm.<\/p>\n Check the assembled weight if the room is upstairs, and check whether the item is supplied flat packed or ready built. Look for a note about the drawer extension, and if none is given, assume close to the full depth of the unit.<\/p>\n Write your own measurements beside the product figures rather than trying to hold both in your head. If every one of your numbers is larger than the corresponding product number, the piece will fit. If one is close, treat it as a no rather than a maybe.<\/p>\n Clear floor in front of a dresser: 75cm minimum. Walkway around a bed: 60cm. Wardrobe door swing: 60cm. Gap at each side of a dresser for comfortable access: 5 to 10cm. Height below a windowsill: measure exactly, and allow 2cm of tolerance.<\/p>\n These figures are guides rather than rules, but a room that meets them will feel comfortable to use, and one that falls well short of them usually does not.<\/p>\n There are usually three ways out. Go taller and narrower, which holds a similar volume in less width and depth. Split the storage between two smaller pieces placed on different walls. Or move the storage into the bed base and skip the dresser altogether, which is often the right call in a very small room.<\/p>\n It is also worth considering whether a dressing table with drawers could do both jobs. Our modern dressing tables UK sale<\/a> range includes designs with useful drawer capacity, which can remove the need for a separate chest in a compact bedroom.<\/p>\n Whichever route you take, having the measurements written down makes the choice straightforward. You can check them directly against every listing across our bedroom furniture UK sale<\/a> pages, and at Furniture in Fashion<\/a> full dimensions are given for each piece so nothing has to be guessed.<\/p>\n Once you have been through the eight steps, keep the sketch. Photograph it and store it with your phone notes, because the same figures will be useful the next time you buy anything for that room: a mirror, a chair, a rug or a wardrobe. Most people measure from scratch each time and make the same omissions each time.<\/p>\n It also helps to note the room’s quirks alongside the numbers. Which corner is out of square, which floorboard dips, where the joists run if you might ever fix something to the wall, and which direction the door opens. These details rarely appear on a floor plan and they decide whether a piece of furniture sits neatly or awkwardly.<\/p>\n If you are buying more than one item, measure for all of them in the same session and plan the whole wall rather than each piece in isolation. Furniture bought one item at a time tends to leave odd gaps that are too small to use and too large to ignore.<\/p>\n Allow around 75cm of clear floor. That covers the drawer pulling out, typically 40 to 50cm, plus enough room to stand and reach in comfortably.<\/p>\n Where possible, yes. Keeping the top below the sill leaves the window unobstructed, preserves the daylight and gives you a usable surface without blocking the view.<\/p>\n The route into the room, particularly the diagonal clearance at a staircase turn. Also commonly missed are skirting board depth and whether the stated depth includes the handles.<\/p>\n Usually yes, though the cartons can still be long. Check the packaging dimensions rather than assuming the boxes are small, especially for wide designs.<\/p>\n Measure from the dresser top to the ceiling or to any fitting above, then subtract around 15 to 20cm so the mirror hangs clear of the surface and anything standing on it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Most problems with a new bedroom dresser trace back to one missed measurement, and it is rarely the wall. This step by step guide walks through the full process in about fifteen minutes: measuring the wall at two heights because older rooms are rarely square,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":65825,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3334],"tags":[205,3958,2799,954],"class_list":["post-65824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-how-to-guide-for-your-home","tag-chest-of-drawers","tag-how-to","tag-measuring-guide","tag-space-planning"],"acf":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Step 3: Check the height restrictions<\/h3>\n
Step 4: Note every obstruction on the wall<\/h3>\n
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Step 5: Measure the door swing and traffic path<\/h3>\n
Step 6: Measure the route into the room<\/h3>\n
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Step 7: Plan the layout on the floor<\/h3>\n
Step 8: Compare against the product dimensions properly<\/h3>\n
A quick reference for common clearances<\/h3>\n
If the measurements do not work<\/h3>\n
Write the measurements down and keep them<\/h3>\n
Frequently asked questions<\/h3>\n
How much space do I need in front of a dresser?<\/h3>\n
Should a dresser be lower than the windowsill?<\/h3>\n
What measurement do people most often forget?<\/h3>\n
Does a flat packed dresser need less access space than an assembled one?<\/h3>\n
How do I measure for a mirror above the dresser?<\/h3>\n