Allow 700 mm from the edge of a dining table to the nearest wall, and 900 mm on any side people also walk behind. 700 mm is what a chair needs to slide back far enough to stand up out of. The extra 200 mm is the person edging past the back of a seated diner. Get the two mixed up and one side of the table becomes unusable the moment the room is full.
The clearances
| Around the table | Space |
|---|---|
| Table edge to wall — chair pull-out only | 700 mm |
| Table edge to wall — pull-out plus someone passing behind | 900 mm |
| Table edge to wall — a main route past the table | 1000–1100 mm |
| Table edge per seated person | 600 mm |
| Table depth for two facing place settings | 800–900 mm |
| Between a table and a kitchen run behind it | 1000 mm |
Gridsnap’s default dining table is 1600 × 900 mm and its chair is 450 × 480 mm, which is a table for six: 1600 mm of long edge is two 600 mm settings with room to spare, plus one at each end.
Add it up and a six-seat table wants a 3.0 × 2.3 m clear zone with 700 mm all round, or 3.4 × 2.7 m if people walk behind two of the sides. That zone is the thing to draw first — the table itself is the easy part.
Rules of thumb
- The 700 mm is measured from the table edge, not the chair back. Chairs tuck about 90 mm under the table edge when pushed in, which is the drafting convention Gridsnap draws them at, so the pushed-in chair is not what sets the number.
- A round table seats more in less width than a rectangular one and is much more forgiving of a tight room, because there are no corners to walk round.
- Push the table towards a wall only on a side you will not seat. A table hard against a wall is a table for four pretending to be a table for six.
- In an open-plan room, dining goes between kitchen and living. It is the hinge between the two, and it is the zone that can absorb the circulation.
- A pendant over the table sets the table’s position permanently, so resolve the table’s location before anyone runs the electrics.
Gridsnap does not check this
There is no plan-check rule for dining clearance. A table drawn hard against a wall raises no finding. This page is the standard, not a description of a check — and that is a gap in the rule set rather than a decision.
What Gridsnap does do with these numbers:
- The layout engine uses 700 mm. When you furnish a room — the Furnish button on a named area, or a plan generated from a brief — a table pose is penalised in proportion to how far short of 700 mm it falls from the nearest room edge on each of its long sides. So an automatically furnished room respects the figure; a hand-drawn one is on its own.
- Chairs may overlap the table. The
overlaprule (free) exempts a chair from colliding with a dining table or a desk, because that is what tucking in means. Chairs are also exempt from most clearance rules for the same reason — they pull out. no-route(Pro) still applies: a walkable route has to reach the room, and furniture blocks it. A table wedged into a corner can therefore make a different item unreachable and get flagged sideways.
What this doesn’t do
- No dining-clearance rule. Neither the 700 mm pull-out nor the 900 mm pass-behind is enforced by the plan check.
- Chair count is not checked against table size. Nothing objects to eight chairs round a 1200 mm table.
- The layout engine’s 700 mm is measured to the room boundary, not to other furniture. A sideboard 300 mm behind a chair is not counted.