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How do you measure a staircase for a house move?

Measure six things: the staircase's narrowest clear width, the clear height straight up from the step nosing, the landing's two measurements, the staircase's pitch and what protrudes into it — it's the clear height, not the width, that stops the furniture.

1. The staircase's clear width — measure where it's narrowest

The clear width is the distance between whatever actually stands in the way, not between the walls. A handrail typically sticks out 8-12 cm from the wall or the balustrade, and on both sides that quickly adds up to 20 cm.

Walk the staircase and measure the width in three places: bottom, middle and top. On a staircase with a quarter-turn or half-turn, the narrowest point is almost always in the turn itself, where the handrail curves inward. Note the smallest figure — that's the staircase's width.

Also measure the width at step height and at chest height separately. Some staircases have a skirting or a string board that narrows them lower down, others have a handrail that narrows them higher up. A piece of furniture carried at an angle hits both.

2. The clear height — straight up from the step nosing

This is the measurement people skip, and it's the one that stops the most furniture. The clear height above a staircase is measured vertically up from the nosing of a step to the lowest point above the stairs: the underside of the floor structure, a beam, a light fitting, the underside of the staircase above it, or the edge of the opening in the ceiling.

Do this at every step in the section where the staircase passes through the floor structure — the clear height gradually falls the further up the stairs you go, until you're through the opening. The smallest figure is the staircase's clear height. In older houses it's often around 190-210 cm; in new builds typically 210 cm or more.

3. The landing is the staircase's real bottleneck

If the staircase has a landing — a flat resting section with a turn — that's where the furniture gets stuck, not on the flights themselves. A landing is effectively a corner between two flights, and the same rules apply:

• Measure the landing's two dimensions: the width in the direction you're coming from, and the width in the direction you need to go.
• A rigid object 90 cm deep can, in a 90 × 90 cm corner, be at most 75 cm long — that is, shorter than it is deep. Meaning it can't get round the corner at all.
• On a 100 × 100 cm landing, a 90 cm deep object can be at most 103 cm long.
• On a 120 × 120 cm landing, the limit is 159 cm for a 90 cm deep object.

But on a landing you can tilt it up on end. If there's enough clear height above the landing, the piece of furniture can be stood on end and rotated about its own axis — and then the landing's dimensions barely matter. That's why points 2 and 3 are linked: measure the clear height above the landing, and compare it with the furniture's longest dimension plus 10-15 cm.

4. The pitch — and why it eats into the clear height

A piece of furniture carried up a staircase is held at an angle, along the line of the stairs. If the ceiling above the stairs is sloped and follows the flight, the space the furniture has perpendicular to the stairs is smaller than the vertical clear height.

Find the staircase's pitch by measuring one step: the rise (vertical, from the top of one step to the next) and the going (horizontal, from one step nosing to the next). The pitch is the angle whose tangent is rise divided by going:

• 17 cm rise / 28 cm going = 31° — a shallow, comfortable staircase.
• 18 cm rise / 25 cm going = 36° — a typical main staircase.
• 20 cm rise / 22 cm going = 42° — an old or steep loft staircase.

The maths: the clear space perpendicular to the stairs is roughly the vertical clear height multiplied by the cosine of the pitch. With 200 cm of vertical clear height, that gives:

• 31° pitch: 171 cm perpendicular.
• 36° pitch: 162 cm perpendicular.
• 40° pitch: 153 cm perpendicular.
• 45° pitch: 141 cm perpendicular.

For a sofa 90 cm deep, even 141 cm is plenty. For a piece of furniture that needs to be tilted up on end on the stairs, it's nowhere near enough — there you need the furniture's full length as clear height, and an ordinary stairwell doesn't have that.

5. Everything that protrudes

Walk the staircase and note everything that juts into the stairwell, with its height above the step and how far it protrudes:

• Handrail and newel post — 8-12 cm, and the post at the bottom is often the worst offender.
• A ceiling light above the stairs — can often be unscrewed in five minutes and free up 20-30 cm.
• Pipework, a meter box, a fuse box, a fire hose in a stairwell.
• Doors that swing into the stairs or onto the landing — can they be taken off their hinges?
• Window sills and bay windows in a stairwell.

Note for each item whether it can be removed. A handrail that unscrews typically frees up 10 cm along the whole length of the staircase, and that's often the difference between yes and no.

6. The doorway at the top and bottom

The staircase ends somewhere. Measure the door's clear opening — the distance between the inner faces of the frame, inside the door stop, not the hole in the wall — both at the bottom and the top of the stairs. Also measure the distance from the top step to the door: if it's under 90 cm, the furniture can't be straightened up before it needs to go through the door, so it will have to fit through at an angle.

Note whether the door leaf can be lifted off its hinges. That typically frees up 4 cm, and on a staircase with only a few centimetres of margin, that's decisive.

The checklist to take up the stairs with you

1. Clear width, measured in three places — note the smallest figure.
2. Clear height straight up from the step nosing, measured at every step through the floor structure — note the smallest figure.
3. The landing's two dimensions, and the clear height above the landing.
4. Rise and going on one step — the pitch.
5. Everything that protrudes, with height and overhang, and whether it can be removed.
6. The door's clear opening at top and bottom, with and without the door leaf.
7. The furniture's three dimensions — measured without legs, cushions and loose parts.

Send the list to the removal company before they arrive. A removal company can refuse on the spot if the staircase hasn't been disclosed, and most charge extra for a hoist through a window or balcony, which needs to be agreed in advance.

The staircase on an accurate drawing

The staircase's clear width, the landing's dimensions and the ceiling height are internal measurements, and they don't appear in official property registers — a register typically states the property's area measured to the outside of the external walls. Scan the stairwell with the iPhone's LiDAR in HouseSense, and you get the internal measurements and an accurate plan of the floors, so the landing's width and the stairwell's dimensions can be read straight off the drawing instead of you having to stand there holding a tape measure yourself.

But staircases are the one piece of geometry where you should be most sceptical of any drawing, wherever it comes from: the clear height above a step depends on a step nosing and a floor edge just a few centimetres apart, and a plan seen from above doesn't show that. If you have under 10 cm of margin, measure the staircase with a tape measure. The drawing may be made to look nice; the figures may not.