How to Scan a Multi-Room House with LiDAR in Under 10 Minutes

Scanning a full house — multiple rooms, hallways, stairwells, and closets — sounds daunting. But with the right technique, a confident LiDAR operator can capture 2,000–3,000 sq ft in under 10 minutes and produce a floor plan accurate to within half an inch.

This guide covers the exact workflow our most productive users follow, from prepping the device to exporting a finished floor plan.

Preparing Your Device and Space

Before you start, make sure your iPhone (12 Pro or later) has at least 30% battery and 2 GB of free storage. LiDAR generates dense point clouds, and running out of space mid-scan forces a restart. Connecting a MagSafe battery pack for long scans is a pro move.

In the room, open blinds and turn on lights. LiDAR works in the dark, but ambient light improves the RGB camera texture used for room recognition. Cover large mirrors and glass surfaces with a sheet or cardboard — highly reflective surfaces create phantom walls and gaps.

Open vPlan AR, tap Scan, and hold your iPhone at chest height. Let the app initialize for 3–5 seconds until the AR grid appears on the floor.

The Room-by-Room Scanning Strategy

Start with the largest room in the house. Walk the full perimeter first, keeping the device 3–4 feet from each wall. You'll see the floor plan outline forming in real time on the AR overlay. Once the perimeter is captured, do one slow pass through the center of the room.

Move to adjacent rooms in a connected sequence — don't jump across the house. Open doorways between rooms while scanning; the app uses the doorway geometry as a reference to stitch rooms together automatically. Keeping doorways open during the scan is one of the single biggest accuracy improvements you can make.

For hallways, walk the length with the device facing sideways at each wall, pausing briefly at every doorway. Hallways are narrow, so the LiDAR sensor captures both walls simultaneously — a single slow pass is usually sufficient.

Handling Difficult Areas

Stairwells are the trickiest area. Scan from the bottom landing first with the device angled upward at about 30°, then walk up slowly and scan the top landing. The app will prompt you to add a new level — tap "Add Level" to begin the upper floor scan.

Closets shorter than 3 feet wide are hard for LiDAR to capture cleanly. Scan the opening from outside (point the device straight in), then step in and do a quick 180° sweep from inside if the space permits. Tight spaces often require a manual correction in the editor afterward.

Built-in furniture like kitchen islands or bathroom vanities can confuse wall detection. After the scan, use the floor plan editor to mark these elements as fixtures rather than walls.

Reviewing and Generating Your Floor Plan

Tap "Finish Scan" when you've captured every room. The app processes the raw LiDAR data into a structured floor plan — this takes 10–30 seconds depending on the size of the scan. Review the generated floor plan on screen, zooming in to check that all walls, doorways, and windows are correctly detected.

Use the editor tools to fix any gaps, straighten walls that captured at a slight angle, or add rooms that were missed. For a 2,000 sq ft home, most users spend 3–5 minutes on post-scan corrections.

When the plan looks right, tap Export to generate a PDF, DXF, or XML file. The entire process from arrival on site to a finished, shareable floor plan typically takes 12–15 minutes.