A doorway is the single most common place furniture gets stuck, and almost every failed move starts with measuring the wrong thing. The number stamped on a door (a 32 inch slab, say) is not the gap your sofa actually travels through. The frame, the stops, and the open door itself all eat into it. This guide shows how to measure the real clear opening, how to use the diagonal so a piece that looks too tall still passes, and how much extra room you buy by lifting the door off its hinges.
The nominal size names the door slab, not the hole. A 32 inch interior door is a 32 inch wide slab hung in a frame, so the actual clear opening (jamb to jamb, with the door swung fully back) is closer to 30 inches once you subtract the frame reveal and the door stop. Always measure the clear opening: the horizontal distance between the inside faces of the two side jambs at the narrowest point, with the door open as far as it goes. If the door does not swing a full 90 degrees, the open door itself shaves another inch or two off the width, so measure to the face of the open door, not the jamb.
| Nominal door | Typical clear width (door open) | With door removed | Where you see it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 24 in | 22 to 22.5 in | 23 to 23.5 in | Closets, small bathrooms |
| 28 in | 26 to 26.5 in | 27 to 27.5 in | Bathrooms, older homes |
| 30 in | 28 to 28.5 in | 29 to 29.5 in | Bedrooms, interior passage |
| 32 in | 30 to 30.5 in | 31 to 31.5 in | Most common interior door |
| 36 in | 34 to 34.5 in | 35 to 35.5 in | Front doors, accessible doors |
A doorway is taller than it is wide, so its diagonal is the longest straight line through it. Tilting a flat item (a tabletop, a mattress, a thin bookcase) lets it use that diagonal instead of the bare width. For a 30 inch wide by 80 inch tall opening, the diagonal is about 85 inches, far more than the 30 inch width. That is why a 78 inch sofa can clear a doorway it could never pass standing square. Measure the opening, measure the smallest face and the diagonal of your item, then let the calculator test every tilt and rotation for you instead of guessing the angle.
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About 30 to 30.5 inches with the door swung fully open. The nominal 32 inches names the slab; the frame and stop subtract roughly 1.5 to 2 inches. Removing the door from its hinges recovers around 1 to 1.75 inches, bringing a 32 inch door to about 31 to 31.5 inches of clear width.
01Measure the clear width (jamb to jamb, door open), the clear height (floor to head jamb), and the diagonal of the opening. Then measure the couch width, height, depth, and its diagonal depth. A couch usually goes through tilted, using the doorway diagonal, so compare the couch diagonal to the opening diagonal, not just width to width.
02Roughly 1 to 1.75 inches, the thickness of the slab plus the frame reveal it occupied. Taking off the door stop trim adds another 0.5 to 0.75 inch per side. On a marginal fit those inches matter, and both are reversible in a few minutes with a screwdriver.
03Neither, exactly. Measure the clear opening: the gap between the inside faces of the side jambs with the door open, at the narrowest point. The door slab is too big a number and the rough frame is too small. The clear opening is the space the furniture actually passes through.
04Enter your item and space above, get an instant fit verdict.
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