How Dining Clearance Works
Not every side of a dining table gets used the same way. One side might back onto a wall where a chair only needs room to slide out; another might be the main route between your kitchen and living room. The dining calculator asks about each side separately for exactly this reason.
The four side-use options
- Chair use only — 76 cm (29.9 in)
- The chair can be pulled out and sat in, but nobody needs to walk past while it's occupied. Typical for a side against a wall or window.
- Normal circulation — 91 cm (35.8 in)
- People walk through occasionally, but it's not a dedicated path. A common default for an open side facing a living area.
- People pass behind seated diners — 107 cm (42.1 in)
- Someone regularly needs to walk behind a chair while a person is sitting in it — for example, a side near a busy kitchen entrance.
- Main route, doorway, kitchen, or balcony access — 122 cm (48 in)
- This side is a primary walking route — to a door, the kitchen, or a balcony — where you'd expect regular two-way foot traffic, sometimes carrying dishes.
Why we don't simulate the chair
SpaceCheck doesn't model a chair sliding out and a person standing up — that depends on the specific chair, how far people push in when they leave the table, and personal habits. Instead, we use fixed planning zones per side, the same approach used in interior-design references, and we say so plainly rather than implying a precision we don't have. The dashed clearance zone in the sketch is the authoritative number; the chair icons are there to help you visualize the table, not to drive the verdict.
Worked example
A 320 cm × 360 cm room with a 100 cm × 180 cm table, where the back side passes behind seated diners and the front side is the main kitchen route: the calculator centres the table and reports roughly 110 cm on the table's shorter (left/right) sides and 90 cm on the longer (top/bottom) sides — comfortably above the "chair-only" minimum, but below the busier sides' own targets, giving an overall "workable" verdict with the main-route side flagged as limiting.