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Is length or width first on a floor plan?

Width is typically listed first, then length. When you see a room labeled "12x16," the standard convention is 12 feet wide by 16 feet long, where width is the dimension you face as you enter and length is the deeper dimension.

That said, this convention is not enforced anywhere, and real estate listings, builder plans, and furniture specs are inconsistent about it. Many agents simply list the smaller number first regardless of orientation. The practical takeaway: never assume orientation from the order of the numbers alone. Check the drawn shape of the room on the plan itself, or look for dimension lines with arrows showing which wall each number belongs to.

If you're extracting dimensions from a floor plan image and the labels are ambiguous or missing, you can verify them directly by scaling the drawing and measuring each wall yourself. MeasureFloorPlan lets you calibrate a plan against one known dimension and then measure any wall on the drawing, which removes the guesswork entirely.