A bathroom is the smallest room you will ever plan and the least forgiving. A few centimetres of clearance decide whether a door clears the basin, whether you can stand at the sink, and whether the whole layout passes building control. A measured floor plan settles all of it before a single pipe moves. This guide shows how to draw a clear, to-scale bathroom plan on your iPhone or iPad - the walls, the fixtures, the clearances, and a tidy export to share with a fitter or client.
Start with an accurate shell
Everything in a bathroom is tight, so the room has to be the right size first. On a Pro device, scan the room with LiDAR and RoomPlot detects the walls, door and window automatically. On any other device, pick a room-shape template - Square, Rectangle, or one of the four L-shape orientations - and drag the walls to your measured lengths. Snapping and the 20 pt grid keep the corners square, and you can type an exact length for any wall so the plan matches your tape to the millimetre.
Tip. Note the soil stack and the existing waste run before you place anything. Keeping the WC and basin on the same wet wall, or two adjacent walls, is the single biggest way to keep a bathroom affordable - moving drainage is the expensive part.
Place the fixtures to real sizes
Open the object library and switch to the Bathroom category - one of 18 categories in RoomPlot's 376-object catalogue, with 31 bathroom items drawn as real vector geometry rather than flat icons. Drop a bath, a shower tray, a WC, a basin and a vanity, then size each one to the product you are actually fitting:
- Resize to the real fixture footprint with the sliders or by typing exact dimensions - a standard bath is about 1700 by 700 mm, an alcove shower 900 mm square.
- Rotate and mirror a basin or WC so the tap and the soil connection sit on the right side.
- Recolour the fill and outline to separate existing fixtures from proposed ones on a refurbishment plan.
Check the clearances
This is where a bathroom is won or lost. Turn on dimensions and read the gaps in front of every fixture, because that is the space a person actually needs:
- In front of the WC - aim for at least 600 mm of clear floor, with 200 mm or more to each side of the pan centreline.
- In front of the basin - leave 700 mm so someone can lean in to the mirror.
- The door swing - watch the arc on the plan and make sure it does not foul the WC or the basin. An inward door that hits a fixture is the classic small-bathroom mistake; the swing arc shows it instantly.
RoomPlot stamps on-plan dimensions and a scale bar in metric or imperial, so you can confirm every clearance adds up on screen rather than discovering a clash on fitting day. Add a zone label and the area is calculated automatically from the wall centrelines.
Export and hand it over
When the layout reads right, export it. Save a single-page PDF or PNG for a quick share, or build a multi-page Report PDF with your logo and an area summary for a client-ready proposal. Need it in CAD? Export DXF and the geometry opens in any package at real-world size. For the room next door, see our guide to drawing a kitchen floor plan, or browse the full set of RoomPlot guides and plan your next bathroom today.
