Bathroom Measuring Information Record Checklist

Measure the room across at floor level and again at about shoulder height, and write both down, since the two often differ more than people expect.

Walls lean and plaster thickens, so a single dimension taken at one height can quietly mislead every decision that follows it.

Check roughly whether the walls meet each other squarely at each corner, and mark on your sketch the corners that clearly do not.

Out-of-square corners decide whether a rigid enclosure or a run of units can sit tight to a wall, and they are far easier to discover now.

Write down whether the floor appears to slope and in which direction, using a level or a rolling object rather than judging by eye.

Floor slope affects trays, doors and how a tiled surface reads, and owners rarely notice it until something obviously sits proud.

Record the ceiling height at more than one point, and note anything that lowers it locally such as a bulkhead or a boxed-in run.

Height governs what can go above head level and whether a riser or extract route is workable in the position you have in mind.

Note what each wall appears to be built of, described by what you see and hear when you tap it, without concluding what is behind it.

How a wall behaves matters for anything hung on it, but the assessment belongs with someone qualified; your job is to describe what you noticed.

Do not assume a wall will carry a heavy fitting; ask a qualified professional to establish what the construction will take.

Mark on your sketch any area where the plaster is soft, stained, blown or visibly repaired, and note roughly how large that area is.

Surface damage is often the only visible clue to something happening behind it, and it shapes what a professional will want to look at first.

Staining or soft plaster may point to something that needs investigating; report what you see and let a qualified professional determine the cause.

Write down which way the bathroom door swings, how far it opens and what it touches or nearly touches along its arc.

Door swing is among the most common reasons a chosen fitting will not work, and it takes a moment to record before anything is ordered.

Note the width of the doorway itself and also the tightest point on the route from the front door to this room.

Baths, trays and glass panels have to reach the room, and the tightest corner on the way in constrains what can realistically be delivered.

Record the window position, which way it opens and what the opening sash sweeps past on the inside of the room.

An inward-opening sash rules out shelves, blinds and tall fittings beneath it, which is easy to miss when looking from across the room.

Measure from the floor to the window sill and note whether anything could sit under it without blocking the opening.

Sill height decides whether a bath, cistern or unit can pass under the window, and it is one of the first things a showroom will ask.

Note whether the window is the only ventilation the room has, and how it is currently opened and closed in practice.

How the room clears moisture belongs in the record, and the answer changes what a professional will want to discuss about ventilation.

Ventilation arrangements are subject to local requirements; ask a qualified professional what applies rather than assuming the window is sufficient.

Write down whether the door could be rehung, changed to slide or moved, and note what sits immediately on the other side of it.

The corridor side usually decides whether a door change is realistic, and owners tend to consider only the bathroom side of the same doorway.

Note where the waste leaves the room from each fitting, as far as you can follow it, and where it reappears outside if it does.

Waste routes are the strongest constraint on moving a fitting, and knowing the existing run shapes the very first layout conversation.

Whether a waste run can be altered is a matter for a qualified professional; record what you see and ask rather than plan around a guess.

Record which pipework is visible, which is boxed in and which disappears into floor or wall, marking each of the three on your sketch.

The proportion of hidden pipework tells a professional how much of the room is unknown, which affects what they will want to open up.

Write down where the water supply to this room appears to come from and where the nearest isolation point you know of is located.

Being able to say where water can be turned off is useful in itself and is among the first things an installer will ask you.

Note the position of any access panel, hatch or removable boxing in the room, and whether it has ever been opened.

Existing access points usually mark where something was previously reached, which is a clue to how the services are arranged.

Record whether the floor sounds solid or hollow underfoot and where that changes, without drawing a conclusion about what is beneath it.

What lies under the floor governs how easily a waste could be re-routed, and the difference between areas is worth marking even if unexplained.

What the floor is built from must be established by a qualified professional before any change to drainage or floor level is planned.

Note where the heated rail or radiator sits and whether its pipes come up through the floor or out of the wall behind it.

Existing heating connections limit where a rail could move to, and the entry point is easy to photograph now and impossible to recall later.

Measure the footprint of each existing fitting and the gap between it and the nearest wall or fitting on either side.

Existing gaps show what the room has tolerated in practice, which is a more reliable starting point than a layout drawn from wishes.

Note the height of the basin rim, the bath rim and the toilet seat as they stand now, and who finds each of them comfortable.

Household comfort with the current heights is genuine information and far easier to record now than to reconstruct afterwards.

Write down whether any fitting sits in a recess, stands on a plinth or is boxed at one end, and how far that build-out projects.

Recesses and plinths hide dimensions, and a replacement chosen on room size alone can arrive too large for the space it must occupy.

Record where the shower controls, waste and screen sit relative to the door, so the part of the room that gets wet is clearly marked.

Marking where water actually reaches is the most useful single overlay on a bathroom sketch and informs almost every later discussion.

Note any fitting that is obviously not level or has been packed at one side, and mark which side the packing is on.

Packing usually reveals a floor or wall problem that will still be there once the fitting has gone, so the observation outlives the fitting.

Write down which fittings are being kept, if any, and find whatever paperwork or instructions originally came with them.

Retained items constrain the design and often need matching connections, so declaring them early avoids an awkward late discovery.

Mark on your sketch the position of every light, switch, pull cord and extract point, measured from the nearest corner of the room.

Positions taken from a fixed corner survive the removal of the fittings themselves, which a photograph on its own does not.

Anything involving electrical points in a bathroom must be discussed with a qualified electrician and confirmed against local requirements.

Note what is fixed to each wall, including rails, hooks, cabinets and shelves, and roughly how firmly each one is held.

Whether previous fixings have held gives an indication of the wall at that spot, which is useful evidence even though it settles nothing.

Record where the mirror sits and whether daylight or a light fitting falls on the face of someone standing in front of it.

Lighting at the mirror is one of the most complained-about things in a finished bathroom and is easy to observe while the old one is still there.

Write down the position of the extract or vent and where you believe it discharges to, marking that belief clearly as unconfirmed.

Extract routes are frequently assumed and rarely traced, and flagging your uncertainty invites the right question at the right moment.

Where extracted air actually goes should be established by a qualified professional; never record an assumed route as though it were confirmed.

Note anything on the ceiling, including hatches, recessed lights and stains, and whether the ceiling sounds hollow when tapped.

The ceiling is the surface owners photograph least and the one most likely to be disturbed by work in the room above or below.

Photograph each wall square on from the opposite side of the room, then each corner, then the floor and ceiling separately.

A consistent set lets someone reconstruct the room mentally, whereas assorted close-ups of details rarely help anyone at all.

Draw a simple plan by hand and write the measurements directly onto it rather than keeping the numbers in a separate list.

Dimensions separated from the drawing end up attached to the wrong wall, which is the commonest error in owner-prepared room records.

Include something of familiar size in the wide photographs so that scale remains readable when the image is looked at later.

Photographs flatten depth badly, and a familiar object in shot stops an alcove being read as far larger or smaller than it really is.

Take one photograph from the doorway at standing height, since that is the view most decisions will ultimately be judged against.

The doorway view is how the room is experienced, and having it to hand keeps discussions grounded in what will actually be seen.

Put a date on the record and issue an updated version if anything changes, rather than quietly editing the original.

Superseded measurements circulate for a surprisingly long time, and dating them makes obvious which version someone is working from.

Write down which measurements you are confident about and which are rough, instead of presenting them all in the same way.

Flagging your own uncertainty is more useful than false precision and tells a professional exactly what they need to check on site.

Ask each professional or supplier what format they want room information in before you send anything to them.

Some want a sketch, some want photographs, some want nothing until they visit, and asking first avoids repeating the exercise three times.

State plainly on the record that the dimensions are owner-taken and have not been checked by anyone qualified to be held to them.

That one line prevents rough figures being relied on for ordering, which is the main risk of preparing a room record at all.

Anything to be made or ordered to size should rest on measurements taken by the person responsible for it, never on yours.

Keep a list of the questions about the room you could not answer yourself, and take that list to the first appointment.

Unanswered questions steer a site visit efficiently and stop it being spent on things you had already established for yourself.

Ask what a professional would need to open up or move in order to answer the questions you could not resolve from the surface.

Knowing in advance that something must be opened up changes how you prepare the room and what you expect a first visit to involve.

Opening up surfaces should be planned with a qualified professional who can advise what it involves and how it will be made good.

Record who you gave the information to and on what date, so that later differences can be traced back to a particular version.

Room records get forwarded and edited, and a simple log of who received what prevents arguments about which figures were relied on.