How many of you have found yourself out and about when you find a piece of furniture for you home that is absolutely perfect. It suits your sense of style, blends seamlessly with the décor you already have, and fits even your limited budget. The only problem is that you’re not sure it will fit. You don’t want to take the time to run home and measure – what if somebody else snaps it up? But what if you get home and it doesn’t fit in your available space? Or how about this one: you go to the hardware store to pick paint, come home with the perfect color, and then realize that you have about a gallon more than you needed. Perhaps you need a hood for your range but you don’t know if it’s a standard size or not. Maybe you’re purchasing wood flooring and you remembered to measure the living room but not the hallway or stairs. These mistakes are all too common in home improvement, and they can lead to wasted time and money. But with the Photo Measures app from developer Big Blue Pixel you can simply input pertinent information into your favorite mobile device from Apple and have it at your fingertips no matter where you are.

At $4.99 this application might strike you as a bit pricy. While it certainly has some good use value, you do have to complete a lot of the legwork on your own. For example, you’ll start by taking a photo of the room or space you want to catalog. From there you can add measurements by selecting a surface and typing in the measurements in a variety of units (inches, centimeters, feet, yards, and so on). It’s not like you can snap a photo and get instant room measurements; you will have to take the measurements on your own and enter them manually. You might grumble that you can do this for free and just write the information on a piece of paper. What exactly are you getting for the price of the app?

For one thing, you’ll have an easy-to-store, mobile home reference at your fingertips. You’ll not only be able to call up photos to see the dimensions of your room, but you can also see the materials and items already in your home to make sure that furnishings fit your space and match your current décor. Plus, you can enter multiple measurements for every space and see them in three dimensions, making for a versatile reference tool. For example, you could take one snapshot of your kitchen and use it to note the wall space, counter surface area, floor measurements, and even the space that is taken up by appliances. Further, there is a zoom feature that allows you to focus in on certain areas for easier viewing. This can be handy not only for homeowners, but also realtors, contractors, interior designers, and other professionals.

Homeowners can use it to provide a carpenter with the exact size of a dining room so that he can make a custom table. Or they can call it up backyard dimensions (including placement of obstacles like a patio and planters) when ordering outdoor pavers from InstallitDirect.com. And for pros working on client homes it can be a godsend in terms of separating projects. In short, Photo Measures could be well worth the price tag, especially considering it could save you a lot of money on costly purchases that just won’t work for a particular property.

Editor’s Note

Thanks to Evan Fischer for this guest post. He is a freelance writer and part-time student at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, California.

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