How to Read Measurements in Your House Plan

Need help on how to read the measurements in your house plan? In this article, we’ll guide you on determining what will be the size of your rooms, how to convert properly with the Philippines’ confusing measurement units, and some elements to consider in your final measurements like door and window dimensions.

To begin, let’s determine the size of Bedroom 1 in our sample blueprint in Figure 1.

(Figure 1. Screencap from “How to read a house plan”)

Notice the solid lines adjacent to the room with marks at either end? Those are called dimension lines or dimension strings. The number in between those marks is the room’s size. Figure 1 shows that Bedroom 1 measures 3910 x 2950.

In this sample, all the measurements are in millimeters. House plans in the Philippines use different measurement units (millimeter, meter, feet, inches) which can be confusing, so it is important that you know how to convert properly. Let’s try to convert the dimensions above.

(Figure 2)

Remember these:

1,000mm = 1m, therefore, the measurements in meter will be 3.91m x 2.95m.

Now, to convert them to inches:

1m = 39.3701in, therefore, the measurements in inches will be 153.94” x 116.14”

To convert to feet:

1in = 0.0833333, therefore, the measurements in feet will be 12.83’ x 9.68’

That’s how you manually convert the measurements. However, you can also use online conversion tools to make the task easier. Once you have the measurements of the room, you might want to check the dimensions of important house parts like the doors and windows. In this blueprint sample, the figure adjacent to the thinner line is the dimensions of your window.

(Figure 3)

To determine the measurement of the actual wall remaining, you have to subtract the window measurement (1.8m) from the wall measurement (3.91m). In this case, it will be:

3.91m – 1.8m = 2.11m

(Figure 4)

There’s a total of 2.11m wall remaining, divide it by 2, and there is 1.055m on either side of the wall.

That’s how you determine the measurement of your room in your house plan. Now that you know how to read measurements, you can discuss whatever adjustments you want with your contractors in the Philippines. Congratulations on your new house!