How Napkin Plan works

The complete guide to getting an accurate "will it fit?" answer — from uploading your first floor plan to collaborating with your household in real time.

1. Uploading a floor plan

Napkin Plan works with any image of a floor plan: a screenshot from an apartment listing, a photo of the plan posted in the leasing office, a scan of architect drawings, or a photo of your own hand-drawn sketch. JPG and PNG both work. If your plan is a PDF, take a screenshot of the page and upload that.

For best results:

• Shoot straight-on. A photo taken at an angle skews proportions — hold the camera parallel to the page.
• Crop to the plan. Trim away surrounding text and margins so the plan fills the frame.
• Higher resolution is better. You'll be clicking precise points on this image during calibration.

2. Calibrating the scale (the important part)

Calibration is what turns your picture into a measurable plan. You tell Napkin Plan one real-world distance, and it derives everything else. The flow:

1. Click Calibrate (it also opens automatically on a new upload).
2. Enter a distance you know, in inches — e.g. a 12-foot room width is 144 inches.
3. Click the two endpoints of that distance on the plan.

Everything depends on the quality of that one reference, so choose it well:

Each floor plan stores its own scale, so a multi-plan household can mix listing screenshots at different sizes without conflict. New to floor plan notation? Our guide to reading floor plans covers symbols and dimension formats.

3. Placing, rotating, and deleting furniture

Pick a piece from the categorized dropdown — beds, sofas, desks, dining, dressers, chairs, and more, all at standard real-world dimensions — and click Add Furniture. The piece appears on your canvas, sized to your calibrated scale. (Curious what the standard sizes are? See our furniture dimensions cheat sheet.)

• Move: drag anywhere on the piece.
• Rotate freely: drag the ↻ handle for any angle — useful for rooms with diagonal walls.
• Rotate 90°: use the quick-rotate button for the common case.
• Delete: hover and click the × handle.
• Special pieces: L-shaped sofas and corner desks render as true L-shapes; beds with nightstands move as one unit; round tables render as circles.

4. Custom furniture

For pieces not in the catalog — your specific sectional, a vintage armoire, a piano — open the Furniture Catalog Manager and add a custom item: choose a category, name it, and enter its width and depth in inches (check "circular" for round pieces, where width = diameter). Custom items appear in the dropdown with a ★ and sync to your account, so they're available on every plan and device. The free plan includes 3 custom pieces; Pro removes the limit.

5. The measure tool

Toggle Measure, then click any two points — the distance appears in feet and inches, using your calibrated scale. Use it to check walkway widths (aim for 30–36 inches on main paths), clearance in front of dressers and closets, and whether the TV-to-sofa distance lands in the comfortable 1.5–2.5× screen-diagonal range. Click again to start the next measurement.

6. Households and real-time collaboration

Your plans live inside a household — share it with a partner or roommate and you both see the same plans, live. When someone drags a piece, everyone else watching the plan sees it move and the piece locks against simultaneous edits. Members can be editors (full layout control) or viewers (look, don't touch). The free plan includes 2 household members; Pro raises it to 4.

It's the answer to the eternal "what if the sofa faced the window?" debate — you can both look at the same live plan from different couches (or different cities).

7. Multiple plans and multi-level homes

Each floor plan is independent, with its own image, scale, and furniture. Pro users can keep up to 10 at once — the killer use case is apartment comparison: one plan per candidate apartment, your same furniture arranged in each, decided side by side. Multi-level plans (Pro) add floors within one plan, for townhouses, duplexes, and lofts — switch levels with one click while keeping everything in one place.

8. The iPad app

Napkin Plan for iPad is a native app with full feature parity — same plans, same household, same real-time sync, with touch-first controls that make dragging furniture feel especially natural. Download it on the App Store. An iPad Pro subscription automatically includes web Pro, so you never pay twice.

9. FAQ — account, billing, and data