How to Scan a Room With Your iPhone: A Step-by-Step 3D Scanning Guide

The short answer

You need an iPhone or iPad with a LiDAR Scanner: an iPhone 12 Pro or any later Pro or Pro Max, or an iPad Pro from 2020 on. Open a 3D room scanner app, turn on every light, and walk the edge of the room at a slow pace with the phone at chest height. Catch the line where each wall meets the floor and the line where it meets the ceiling. Pause at doors and windows, finish where you started, and look the model over before you leave the house.

A typical room takes a few minutes. Apple's guidance for apps built on its room-scanning framework is to keep any single scan under five minutes, because long scans drain the battery and heat up the phone.

Which iPhones and iPads have LiDAR

Fast, accurate room scanning depends on the LiDAR Scanner, a depth sensor on the back of the device that measures the distance to surfaces up to 5 meters (about 16 feet) away. Apple only puts it in Pro models.

iPhones with LiDAR: iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max (2020), iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max (2021), iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max (2022), iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max (2023), iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max (2024), iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max (2025), and iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max (2026).

iPads with LiDAR: every iPad Pro since 2020. That covers the 11-inch (2nd generation) and 12.9-inch (4th generation) from 2020, the 11-inch (3rd generation) and 12.9-inch (5th generation) from 2021, the 11-inch (4th generation) and 12.9-inch (6th generation) from 2022, the 11-inch and 13-inch M4 models from 2024, and the 11-inch and 13-inch M5 models from 2025.

No LiDAR: every iPhone without Pro in the name. That includes the standard iPhone 12 through iPhone 17, the mini and Plus models, the SE, iPhone 16e and 17e, iPhone Air, and Apple's foldable iPhone Duo. The iPad Air, iPad mini and standard iPad don't have it either. Neither does the iPhone 11 Pro, so the word Pro on its own isn't enough.

Not sure what you're holding? Go to Settings > General > About and read the Model Name. On an iPhone you need Pro in the name and a number of 12 or higher. On an iPad it has to be an iPad Pro from 2020 or later.

Choose a 3D room scanner app

The app decides what you walk away with, and most fall into one of three groups.

Floor plan apps turn the scan into a measured 2D plan you can mark up and export. magicplan adds photo reports and, on its PRO plans, an estimator; its own site now leads with restoration work. RoomScan Pro LiDAR, from Locometric, sticks to fast floor plans with a long list of export formats.

3D capture apps such as Polycam keep a detailed 3D model of the room, which is what you want for as-builts, documentation, or a file for an architect. Polycam's Business plan adds 2D and 3D floor plans.

Remodeling apps such as Alcovia use the scan as the starting point for a redesign, photorealistic renders and a quote.

Every one of them starts with the same walk around the room, so the technique below works whichever app you choose. For features and published pricing side by side, see magicplan vs Polycam vs RoomScan Pro vs Alcovia.

Prep the room before you scan

Five minutes of prep saves a second trip.

Close the doors to rooms you aren't scanning, closets included. Apple recommends it so the scan doesn't wander into the hallway. During the day, open the blinds and curtains: the extra light helps, and open curtains keep the windows visible so the app can place them.

Turn on every light in the room, under-cabinet lights included. The lighting section below explains why that matters even though the laser works in the dark.

Clear the baseboards. You don't need an empty room, but the scanner has to see where each wall meets the floor. Laundry baskets, toy bins and boxes lined up along a wall hide that line.

Wipe the camera lenses and start with a decent charge. Scanning works the phone hard, and Apple warns that long scans drain the battery and run hot.

Ask the homeowner to keep kids and pets out of the room for a few minutes. Anything moving in front of the phone is one more thing the app has to tell apart from the walls.

Furniture: what to move and what to leave

Leave the big pieces where they are. Apps built on Apple's RoomPlan framework recognize common furniture and fixtures, such as sofas, beds, tables, chairs, cabinets, toilets, tubs and major appliances, and keep them separate from the walls. A furnished room still gives you wall dimensions.

What no scanner can do is see behind things. A wall hidden by a wardrobe or a stack of boxes gets guessed or left out of the model. So pull light pieces a few inches off the wall when they hide a corner or the floor line. A chair tucked into a corner is enough to blur it.

If something heavy blocks a wall you need, scan around it and tape that wall by hand. Don't spend the visit moving a china hutch.

Step by step: how to scan the room

1. Start in a corner or a doorway. Hold the phone upright at about chest height with the screen facing you, and start the scan in your app.

2. Walk the perimeter in one direction. Move along the walls instead of standing in the middle and turning in a circle. The sensor reads out to about 16 feet, so in a big room, walk over to the far walls instead of scanning them from across the floor.

3. Sweep each wall from floor to ceiling. Tilt the phone down to catch the floor line and up to catch the ceiling line as you go. Get both edges on every wall, and get every corner.

4. Slow down at openings. Give each door, window and pass-through a second or two. You'll price casing, trim and drywall returns around those openings, so you want every one of them in the model.

5. Watch the screen and follow the prompts. Room scanning apps build the model on screen as you go, and apps built on Apple's framework get live feedback about your speed, your distance from the wall, the lighting, and surfaces that are hard to read. If the app tells you to slow down or move closer, do it.

6. Close the loop. Finish where you started so the app can line the last wall up with the first. If the model shows a gap, or a wall that doesn't meet its neighbor, go back over that spot before you stop.

7. Check the model before you leave. Spin it around. Are all the walls there? Do the doors and windows sit where they belong? Pull a tape on one long wall and compare it with the scan. Finding a hole while you're standing in the room costs two minutes. Finding it back at the office costs a trip.

Lighting: the laser doesn't need it, the camera does

The LiDAR Scanner sends out its own light, so it can measure depth in a dim room. The rest of the scan can't. Your phone keeps track of where it is by watching the camera feed along with its motion sensors, and when the picture gets dark and grainy, tracking slips and walls start to drift.

Apple recommends at least 50 lux for room scanning, which it describes as typical of a family living room at night. On a job that means every light on, blinds open during the day, and a work light for basements, attics, and gutted rooms lit by one bare bulb.

Watch out for bright windows. Hold the phone on one for long and the camera exposes for the glass, so the wall around it goes dark. If your app lays photos over the model, that wall will look washed out on the copy you show the client. Scan window walls at an angle and keep moving.

Common mistakes that ruin a room scan

Walking too fast. Quick sweeps leave holes, and small tracking errors pile up until the last wall doesn't meet the first. Walk slower than feels necessary.

Spinning in the middle of the room. You end up far from every wall at once. Walk the edges.

Aiming straight at mirrors and glass. Apple names full-height mirrors and glass as hard cases for the sensor, which matters in every bathroom you scan. Catch the frame at an angle, and tape the opening if the app drops it.

Rushing past dark finishes. Apple also flags very dark surfaces as hard to scan. Slow down on black cabinets, dark tile and espresso-stained floors.

Trusting a vaulted ceiling. A high ceiling can sit beyond the sensor's range. Tape-check the height.

Scanning a huge room in one pass. Apple's framework works best on single rooms up to about 30 by 30 feet. Scan a big open-plan space in sections, or use an app that can merge several scans.

One long scan of the whole house. Keep each scan under five minutes and go room by room.

Ordering fabricated work off the scan. A scan is good for quantities. Cabinets, countertop templates, shower glass and anything else built to fit still get a tape measure. The next section explains why.

How accurate is an iPhone room scan?

Apple doesn't publish an accuracy figure for the LiDAR Scanner. If an app quotes one, that number comes from the app maker, not from Apple.

Independent research gives a fair picture. In a 2024 study in the HBRC Journal, an iPad Pro measured the lengths, widths and heights of a university hall to within 1 to 2 cm of a professional terrestrial laser scanner, with the hall captured in overlapping scans from fixed positions. A 2023 study in the journal Geomatics tested four scanning apps on an iPhone 13 Pro. Results varied from app to app on the same phone, the authors said tracking the phone's position was where the software most needed to improve, and they judged the technology well suited to quick floor plans.

For a remodeler, that adds up to this. A careful scan is good enough for flooring, paint, drywall, baseboard and tile quantities, where you order with a waste factor anyway. It isn't good enough to template a countertop or order a custom vanity. Scan for the takeoff, then tape the handful of dimensions that get cut or built to fit. Our guide to how accurate iPhone LiDAR is covers what pushes the error up or down.

What to do with the scan

A scan on its own is a 3D picture of a room you haven't been paid for yet. What you do with it next decides whether it was worth the five minutes.

Price the job from it. Floor area drives flooring and underlayment. Wall area drives paint, drywall and tile. Perimeter and openings drive baseboard, casing and trim. Pull those numbers off the scan instead of a sketch on a notepad and you can quote on the first visit.

Design on it. The scan holds the room's real shape: where the window sits, how tall the ceiling is, how much wall you have for cabinets. That's the base for showing the homeowner a new layout or new finishes in their own room instead of a catalog photo.

Render it. Plenty of homeowners can't picture a remodel from a finish schedule. A photorealistic image of their own kitchen with the new cabinets and counters answers a lot of questions before they get asked.

Keep it. Save the scan with the job. It's an as-built record for change orders, for subs who need dimensions, and for the next project in the same house.

Alcovia is built around that workflow. You scan the room with an iPhone or iPad Pro and get an auto-generated floor plan and a 3D model of the room. Then you redesign it with AI, by describing the changes or applying the client's inspiration photo, and export photorealistic renders in a client-ready PDF. On the Growth plan the same scan feeds a material takeoff and a project quote. See how the LiDAR scanning step feeds the AI remodel engine, or walk through the full scan-to-estimate workflow.

Scanning is part of the Core plan at $49 per project, with no monthly fee. Growth is $199 per project and adds the takeoff, the quote, a client design portal, a contractor CRM, and project management and scheduling. Basic, at $29 per seat per month, covers unlimited AI redesigns from photos, without scanning. Alcovia is in closed beta: join the early-access list and your first project is free.

Frequently asked questions

Can I scan a room with an iPhone that doesn't have LiDAR?

Yes, with limits. RoomScan Pro LiDAR has a Touch Mode where you tap the phone against each wall, and Locometric says it works on any device. magicplan can scan with the camera on iPhones that lack LiDAR. Polycam's Space Mode builds a 3D mesh without LiDAR on iPhone 13 and newer, but its floor plans still need LiDAR. Expect slower scans and shakier dimensions than a LiDAR model gives you. Apple's RoomPlan framework, and the room scanning built on it, needs LiDAR.

Does the iPhone have a built-in room scanner?

No. Apple's Measure app works like a tape measure, and on LiDAR models it adds guide lines, a tool for measuring a person's height, and a measurement history. It won't give you a floor plan or a 3D model of a room. For that you need a scanning app.

How long does it take to scan a room?

A few minutes for a typical kitchen, bath or bedroom. Apple recommends keeping any single scan under five minutes, so split bigger spaces into sections.

Can I scan a whole house?

Room by room, yes. Since iOS 17, Apple's RoomPlan framework can merge several room scans into one model of the home, and Apple says that works best on single-floor homes up to about 2,000 square feet. Whether you get that depends on the app.

Do I need to move furniture before scanning?

No. Clear the baseboards, pull light pieces off the wall if they hide a corner, and leave the sofa where it is.

Can I scan a room with an Android phone?

Your options are thinner. Apple's LiDAR Scanner and RoomPlan are iPhone and iPad features. magicplan runs on Android but doesn't support its scan features there, so you draw the room or define its corners instead. Polycam's Android app captures objects from photos, while its room-scanning Space Mode is iOS only. Alcovia and RoomScan Pro LiDAR have no Android versions.