Demo scans are always of empty rooms. Your jobs are not. The good news is that LiDAR scanning handles a lived-in house better than most people expect — if you know what actually blocks it.
What furniture does and does not hide
Scanstead builds walls from the surfaces it sees, and it is willing to infer a wall behind a sofa from the floor and ceiling lines that continue past it. What it cannot do is invent a wall it never saw at all. In practice:
- A couch against a wall — fine, keep walking, the wall above it is visible
- Floor-to-ceiling bookcases — scan the room, then note the covered run in a voice memo
- Wall-to-wall wardrobes — treat the closet face as the wall and say so out loud
- Piles on the floor — harmless, the floor plan comes from the perimeter
Doors open, every one of them
The single highest-value habit: walk the house once before scanning and open every interior door, closet, and pantry. A closed door is a wall as far as the scan is concerned, and a closet you skipped is a closet you measure twice.
Be a guest about it
You are in someone's home. Say what you are doing before you point a phone at their bedroom, skip anything personal, and do not move their belongings — note the obstruction instead. A thirty-second explanation of what the scan is for also tends to turn into the moment you win the job.
Flag it while you are standing there
Every room with a covered wall gets a voice note pinned to the spot: "six-foot run behind the built-in, assume standard eight-foot height." That is the difference between an assumption you documented and an assumption you forgot.
A perfect scan of an empty house helps nobody. A good scan of a house with a dog in it is the whole job.