A material takeoff measured off your own floor plan
Every material order on a build traces back to a handful of numbers taken off the plan. Floor area decides the flooring. Wall length decides the framing. Wall and ceiling area decide the plasterboard, insulation and paint. PlanHome reads those numbers from the geometry you drew, so the drawing and the schedule are the same document.
What gets measured
| Quantity | Measured from |
|---|---|
| Floor area | Room polygons, per room and totalled |
| Wall length | Wall runs in linear metres, external and internal split |
| Wall lining area | Wall length × ceiling height, openings deducted |
| Ceiling area | Floor area per storey |
| Openings | Every door and window with its width and height |
Every line shows what it was measured from, so your builder can check the takeoff rather than trust it.
We measure. Your builder prices.
Quantities are objective and can be measured off a drawing. Rates are commercial and change constantly. Keeping the two apart is what makes the schedule useful: take it to two or three builders, have them price the same list, and any difference between the quotes is a difference in rates rather than in what was assumed.
Common questions
- Does PlanHome give me a price?
- No, and that is deliberate. PlanHome measures how much material the design needs. Your builder applies their own supply rates, labour, preliminaries and margin. Material rates vary by region, supplier and month, so a schedule with someone else's prices baked in is worse than no estimate at all.
- Is a takeoff from a plan accurate enough to order from?
- For the main quantities on a straightforward residential job, yes, provided the plan is drawn to scale with real wall thicknesses. Normal practice is to treat it as the basis of the order and have the trade confirm their own measure before anything is cut.
- What happens when I change the design?
- The schedule is measured from the plan geometry rather than typed in, so moving a wall updates the quantities with it. That is the failure mode of a spreadsheet takeoff: the plan changes late and every dependent number is silently wrong.
- Can my builder check the numbers?
- Yes. Every quantity shows what it was measured from, so a builder can verify the takeoff rather than take it on trust. That matters more than the numbers being impressive.