Will your new sofa fit through the lift and the door? A simple measuring guide for UAE apartments

Most people measure the wall where the sofa will go, and that is the right place to start. But in an apartment in Dubai, Abu Dhabi or Sharjah, a sofa also has to travel from the street to your living room: through the building entrance, into the lift, along a corridor, through your front door and sometimes around a turn in your hallway.

The narrowest point on that route decides what can come in. It only takes a few minutes to measure, and it lets you choose a sofa with complete peace of mind. On every Pufflo sofa page, the Will it fit? tool checks the sofa against your wall. This guide covers the rest of the journey.

Take a tape measure, a notebook or your phone, and walk the route from the building entrance to the room. Note these measurements:

The clear width is the real space the sofa can pass through: measure with the door open as far as it goes, from the face of the open door to the edge of the opening on the other side. Handles and handrails take a few centimetres, so measure past them.

A sofa does not go through a door the way it stands in your room. It is carried through upright, or tipped onto its back, length first. So what must fit through the width of the door is not the length of the sofa but the smaller of its depth and its height.

• If that measurement is a few centimetres narrower than the clear width of the door, the sofa can pass.
• The larger of the two must also be lower than the height of the door, which is rarely a problem with standard doors.

Here is what that means for our sofas, using the sizes on each sofa page:

For a chaise sofa, note the depth at the chaise as well, since that end is deeper than the rest. If you have a question about a particular sofa, ask us on WhatsApp.

In a lift, the question is the length of the sofa. A long sofa rarely lies flat on the floor of a residential lift, so it travels standing on its end or leaning at an angle. That is why the inside height and the diagonal matter most.

1. Measure the inside depth of the lift, from the door to the back wall, and the inside height, from the floor to the ceiling panel.
2. Work out the diagonal: multiply the depth by itself, add the height multiplied by itself, and take the square root. A phone calculator does this in seconds.
3. Compare it with the width of the sofa. A common rule is to keep about 10 cm of margin, because the sofa has its own thickness when it leans.

For example, a lift 140 cm deep and 220 cm high inside has a diagonal of about 260 cm. A sofa up to about 250 cm wide can then travel at an angle, as long as it also passes through the lift door. Every building is different, so always measure your own lift rather than relying on a typical size.

A straight corridor is easy. A turn, especially a turn straight into a doorway, is where long sofas need the most thought.

• Measure the corridor at the turn, and the ceiling height there. Movers often stand a sofa on its end to swing it round a tight corner, so a high ceiling helps.
• Do a tape test. Mark the sofa's footprint on the floor of the corridor with masking tape, then picture it turning. It shows the tight spots at once.
• Look at the doors. Taking a door off its hinges gains a few centimetres, and it only takes a few minutes with a screwdriver.

If your building has compact lifts or a hallway with a sharp turn, a modular sofa or a compact one is the easy answer. Our guide to the right sofa for a small apartment has more ideas.

A modular sofa travels in pieces, and each piece is much smaller than the whole sofa. That makes it the most relaxed choice for a tower apartment.

Comfo is made of separate modules, each about 114 by 114 cm and 81 cm high, and its ottomans are lower still. Turned on its side, a module passes through an opening a little wider than 81 cm. The Comfo 2-seater, 229 cm wide, is simply two modules side by side, and even a large U-shape arrives one module at a time and is joined again in your living room.

Our guide are modular sofas worth it? explains what else they do well.

• Measure before you order, and keep your notes on your phone.
• Tell your building. Some buildings like to know about a large delivery in advance, or ask you to book a time for the lift. A quick message to reception or building management keeps the day smooth.
• Clear the route of shoes, plants, rugs and anything fragile on the way to the living room.
• Clear the spot where the sofa will go, so it can be placed straight away.

Every Pufflo sofa is handmade locally when you order and arrives 3 to 6 days later, delivered and installed free in all seven emirates. The dates are shown when you order. Our guide to sofa delivery and installation explains what happens on the day. Need a different size for a tight space? Ask for a custom sofa: the team replies within 48 hours with a drawing and a price.