Can I scan furniture dimensions with an iPhone?

What the iPhone actually measures on furniture

A LiDAR iPhone or iPad Pro sees depth. Apple's RoomPlan uses it to find the room's walls, windows, doors and openings, and the room-defining objects in it: sofas, tables, chairs, beds, cabinets, fireplaces and more. Each object is stored as a cuboid, a box, with its dimensions and a confidence level.^[1]

So the scan gives you the overall size of each piece: how wide, how deep, how tall, and exactly where it stands. It does not give you the curve of a sofa arm or the depth of a seat cushion. For planning a room, the box is the size that matters: it is the space the piece takes.

Why measure furniture inside the room, not on its own

Measuring one sofa takes a tape and a minute. The hard question is never the sofa alone. It is whether it fits between the window and the door, whether the bookcase blocks the vent, whether the table leaves room to walk around. Those answers need the furniture and the room in the same drawing.

That is what a room scan gives you. PlaceAnew scans the whole room in one walk, so every piece is placed against the measured walls, doors and windows, on a plan that is to scale.

How to scan furniture with PlaceAnew

1. Light the room. Apple recommends at least 50 lux of light for RoomPlan.^[1] Turn the lights on and open the blinds.
2. Leave the furniture where it is. PlaceAnew recognizes it and keeps it.
3. Walk around the pieces. Sweep the camera over each one and along each wall, from floor to ceiling, so the scan sees its sides.
4. Open the plan. Each recognized piece is drawn to scale. Use the measure tool for any distance: piece to wall, piece to door, piece to piece.
5. Look in 3D. Turn the model to see the room and its furniture from any side.

What you get from the scan

• A floor plan with the furniture to scale, rooms named and measured, doors and windows in place.
• A 3D model with the furniture PlaceAnew recognized: beds, sofas, tables, cabinets, appliances and more.
• A PDF report with every room and its area, a count of the furniture and fixtures, and each door and window with its width.
• Files: PDF report, SVG drawing, DXF for CAD and USDZ 3D model, to continue in your own design software.

What the scan leaves out

• Shapes, not sizes. Curved sofas, carved legs, sectional modules: the scan gives the box, not the profile. A slipcover or a glass top is made from the piece's own shape.
• Small objects. Lamps, decor and objects on shelves are not what RoomPlan is built to recognize. Walk still shows them, in the recording of your visit.

Questions about scanning furniture

Designers: see PlaceAnew for interior designers.