Home Goods and Furniture Editing and Proofreading Services

The sofa is delivered on a Tuesday and does not go up the stairs. The turn on the half-landing is too tight, the frame does not come apart, and two people who have driven ninety minutes take it away again. The product page gave the dimensions of the sofa. Nobody asked the customer to measure the doorway, the hall or the turn.

We edit what furniture and home retailers produce — delivery and access information, measurement guidance for customers, assembly and installation instructions, product dimension and material specifications, lead time and made-to-order communications, care and warranty information, and the messages sent when a delivery cannot be completed. Our editors work on the gap between a product's size and a house's shape.

The measurement guidance is what determines whether a large item reaches the room it was bought for, and its failure is a product dimension without an access instruction. A sofa that fits a room and not the stairs has not been delivered. We work through these so the customer is asked to measure the route rather than the space, with each point listed in the order they will walk it — the front gate, the path width, the door frame, the hall, the turn, the stair width, the landing, the second door; so the diagonal measurement is explained, since a sofa goes through a doorway on its side and the height of the doorway matters more than its width; so the item's own critical dimension is given separately from its overall size, because the depth of the frame with the feet removed is the number that decides it; so what can be dismantled is stated exactly, given that "some assembly required" says nothing about whether the arms come off; so the customer is told what happens if it does not fit, with the charge, before they order rather than at the door; so a photograph of the tightest point is requested where the customer is unsure, as this is faster than any form; so the delivery team's own limits are stated — whether they will remove doors, use a window, or carry above a certain floor; and so the made-to-order position is clear, since a bespoke item that does not fit cannot be returned. Guidance written this way gets the sofa into the room.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including product data, delivery records and customer correspondence. We are editors rather than logistics or fitting specialists, and we offer no view on products, delivery or access. What we can do is get the customer to measure the right thing.