PlanTape PlanTape Typical internal floor areas, what to watch for on the drawing, and how to measure each layout accurately for flooring, skirting and renovation quotes — wherever you are.
Studios pack living, sleeping and cooking into one open space, typically 25–45 m² depending on the market. Small footprints make quotes unforgiving: a 2 m² measuring error can be 5–8% of the whole job.
The classic starter apartment: a bedroom, a combined living/dining space, kitchen and bathroom in roughly 40–70 m² depending on the city and building age.
The workhorse of rental and family housing worldwide at roughly 55–95 m². Two bedrooms plus a living zone means more internal walls — and skirting runs that are easy to under-count from a glance at the plan.
Family-sized apartments run about 80–140 m² with three bedrooms and frequently a second bathroom or en-suite — meaning more thresholds, more transitions, and more places for a quote to leak.
Townhouses and terraced houses spread 90–200 m² across two or three storeys. Multi-storey plans mean multiple drawings per unit — double or triple the measuring work, and the same multiplier on errors.
Single-family homes range enormously — 120–300 m² is typical, but larger builds are common. At this scale, percentage errors turn into serious money: 3% on a 250 m² timber floor is most of a room.
Developer condominium plans follow the same measuring logic as any apartment — trace the internal floor, calibrate to a printed dimension — but with more balconies, planters and ledges to exclude.
Public housing in Singapore has its own well-defined layouts — and its own measuring traps (household shelters, access balconies, angled blocks). Detailed guides per flat type:
The smallest current HDB flat type in Singapore, offered in Type 1 (~36–38 m²) and Type 2 (~45–47 m²) layouts, popular with singles and downsizing retirees.
A staple of older Singapore estates like Toa Payoh, Ang Mo Kio and Bedok, typically 60–65 m² with two bedrooms — a very common size for skirting and flooring repackaging jobs.
Singapore's most common flat type at roughly 85–93 m² with three bedrooms — the bread-and-butter of renovation and flooring quotations in the city-state.
At about 110–113 m², the 5-room HDB flat adds a dining area or study zone to the 4-room template — more floor, more skirting, and more places for a quote to go wrong.
Built mainly in the late 1980s–1990s, Singapore Executive Apartments run ~130–145 m² with generous living zones, and often angled walls that make manual measurement tedious.
Two-storey HDB living at ~139–155 m². Maisonette plans come as two separate floor drawings, which doubles the measuring work — and the room for error.
Jumbo flats are two adjacent Singapore HDB flats converted into one — commonly in Woodlands, Yishun and Tampines — spanning roughly 145–190 m² depending on the pair joined.
Designed for multi-generation households in Singapore, 3Gen flats run ~115–122 m² with four bedrooms, two of them en-suite — more wet areas and more skirting runs than a 5-room.
Design, Build and Sell Scheme flats (Singapore, 2005–2011 — e.g. The Pinnacle@Duxton, City View @ Boon Keng) were designed by private developers, so layouts vary far more than standard HDB types.