Floor plans and layouts: how to read the drawing

Almost every home listing contains a small black-and-white drawing of the home seen from above. Many just glance at it and focus on the styled interior photos. That is a mistake. The drawing often says more about what it is actually like to live in a home than a wide-angle photo of a lit living room does.

Two words usually come up here: planritning (floor plan drawing) and planlösning (layout). They sound almost alike but mean different things. Once you understand the difference, and learn to read the drawing itself, you get a tool that helps you compare homes fairly and see through a beautifully photographed but impractical space.

Floor plan or layout: what is the difference?

The planritning is the drawing itself: the technical picture of the home seen from above, with walls, doors, windows and rooms drawn to scale. It is the document, the paper you look at. The planlösning is instead how the space is arranged: how rooms sit relative to each other, how you move between them, and how well the flow works day to day.

Simply put, the floor plan drawing shows the layout. Two homes can be exactly the same size in square metres but have completely different layouts: one with a thoughtful, open space, the other with long corridors and rooms you must walk through to reach other rooms. It is the layout, not just the square metres, that decides how well a home works to live in.

How to read symbols, scale and measurements

A floor plan is full of standard symbols. Doors are usually drawn as a line with an arc showing which way the door swings. Windows appear as thinner sections or double lines in the wall. You often find symbols for stove, fridge and freezer, sink, toilet, washbasin, shower and bathtub, so you see where kitchen and bathroom are and how they are furnished from the start.

The drawing is made to scale, often 1:100, meaning one centimetre on paper equals one metre in reality. Many drawings also have measurements marked along the walls. Use them. A room can look spacious on paper but turn out too narrow for a double bed or a dining set once you count the actual measurements. Get into the habit of measuring your larger furniture at home, so you can compare directly against the drawing’s numbers.

Why the area on the drawing can differ from living area

A common source of confusion is that the area on the drawing does not always match the living area (boarea, often shortened to BOA) stated in the listing. Boarea is the area counted as full-value living space. Biarea is space not counted the same way, for example a boiler room, a garage, or parts of a finished attic with sloped ceilings.

Sloped ceilings are a classic trap. In rooms with sloping roofs, only the part with sufficient ceiling height counts toward living area, even if the floor is physically larger. That is why a split-level floor or an attic apartment can feel, and look, bigger on the drawing than the living area suggests. Measurements follow a Swedish standard, but are not always redone at every sale. If the numbers look odd, ask the agent how the area was measured and what counted as living area versus secondary area.

Open or closed layout

An open layout means several functions, often kitchen, dining and living room, sit together in one shared room without walls between. It gives an airy impression, lets light in, and makes it easy to spend time together. The downside is that closing a door on the world gets harder, sound travels freely, and cooking smells spread through the whole space.

A closed layout instead has clearly separated rooms with doors. That gives calm, a chance to shut the world out, and better sound insulation between rooms, but can feel darker and more divided. There is no answer key for which is best. It depends on how you live. A household working from home that needs quiet rooms has different needs than a family wanting everything in one open social hub. The point is that the floor plan reveals which one you are dealing with before you have even set foot in the home.

What to check with the drawing in hand

Bring the drawing to the viewing and use it actively. Check that rooms are where you think and feel as large in reality as on paper. Look for walk-through rooms you must pass to reach other rooms, where the windows sit and which direction they face, and how far it is between kitchen and dining table. Think about where your furniture actually fits and whether door swings clash with how you want to furnish.

The drawing is also a good way to compare homes fairly against each other, without being fooled by styling and photo angles. On SökHem you take it one step further: instead of digging through listing after listing, you place a buying brief with your criteria and budget, so the matching actively looks for sellers that fit, even ones who have not listed publicly yet. When the right place appears, you can read the drawing like a pro and quickly judge whether the layout truly fits your life.