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Will this room actually work?

Capacity arithmetic tells you the furniture fits. It cannot tell you whether a server can reach table nine, whether the bar top turns the corner on the way in, or how much floor the gift table and the coat rack quietly take.

Those are the three ways an evening goes wrong in a room that was, on paper, big enough.

The room

Nothing here works without real dimensions, because clearances are distances between things and a square footage is an area. Measure a room in Will my guests fit? and save it, then come back.

The evening

Choose a saved room above and the clearances and the forgotten floor appear. The load-in check below needs no room — it is about the corridor, not the ballroom.

Getting it in

A 16 ft bar top does not reach the room. It stops at the tightest right-angle turn, and it stops there whatever the room measures.

  • The narrowest doorwayClear

    A 16 ft bar top passes a 3 ft × 7 ft opening. A doorway only ever sees the cross-section, never the length.

  • The tightest right-angle turnStops here

    A 16 ft bar top is 16 ft, and a 5 ft into 6 ft turn takes up to 10.5 ft. The corridor widths at either end do not help; the worst moment of the turn decides it.

The corner is the one people do not check. Two 5 ft corridors meeting at a right angle will not pass a 12 ft item, however large the room at either end — the worst moment of the turn decides it, not the corridor widths on their own.

Planning arithmetic on figures you supplied, using the same clearance table the floor-plan solver draws with — banquet — 60 in rounds of eight here allows 13.5 sq ft a guest. A venue confirms what its own room and its own dock will take.