The Scanstead blog
Measure smarter, every day
A new post every day on LiDAR scanning, takeoffs, floor plans, and winning bids with better numbers.
What to send the client after the walkthrough
Most contractors send a price. Sending a price with a model of their own house is a different experience — and it arrives before your competitor calls.
Will it fit? Scanning for moves and furniture delivery
The expensive mistake in a move is the piece that will not go through the door. A scan measures the route, not just the room.
Inspection reports that show the room, not just a photo of it
An inspection report is a list of findings and where they are. A scan puts each finding at a location in the actual building.
From scan to estimate: getting numbers out of the model
A measurement is only useful where the pricing happens. Here are the paths out of a scan, and which one fits which workflow.
Garages, shops, and the large open room
A big open space scans differently from a bedroom. Longer walls, more clutter, and a sensor with a range limit. Here is the technique.
What designers actually want from a site visit
Designers need accurate space, not just dimensions — where the light comes from, how the rooms connect, what the ceiling does. A scan carries all of it.
Decks, patios, and driveways: pricing from a lot trace
Outdoor hardscape is an area-and-perimeter problem on ground that has no walls. Tracing the outline gives you both.
Square footage that holds up: scanning for listings and appraisals
Gross living area is a defined measurement with rules about what counts. A scan gives you the room areas; the standard tells you which ones to add.
Surviving a long scanning day: battery, heat, and storage
A whole-house scan is sustained sensor, camera, and screen work. Four practical habits keep the phone alive through the third house.
Unit turns: scanning rentals once and using it forever
A rental unit gets painted, re-floored, and re-leased every few years. Scan it once and every future bid starts from a measured plan.
Device counts and wall runs for electrical rough-in
Electrical quantities are counts and lengths — devices per room, feet of wall, feet of home run. A floor plan with real dimensions produces all of them.
Room volumes for HVAC: load calculations start with geometry
A Manual J load calc needs room dimensions, ceiling heights, window areas, and envelope surfaces. One scan produces all four.
Naming and organizing scans so you can find them in March
A scan you cannot locate is a scan you did not take. One naming convention and two habits keep a year of walkthroughs usable.
When not to use a LiDAR scan
An honest list of jobs where scanning is the wrong tool, from the people who make the scanning app.
Getting a crew to scan consistently
One person scanning well is a trick. Five people scanning the same way is a process — and the difference is about four habits.
Documenting a loss: scanning for restoration and insurance claims
Claims are won with documentation. A scan captures the room, its dimensions, and its condition in one pass — timestamped and hard to argue with.
Rescanning one room without redoing the house
A bad scan of one bedroom should not cost you the whole-house model. Here is how a single room gets replaced in place.
Should you charge for the site survey?
Scanning makes the measuring trip faster, which raises an uncomfortable question — is the walkthrough a free sales call or a billable deliverable?
As-builts in an afternoon: documenting a building that has no drawings
Most older buildings have no usable drawings. A scan turns a walkthrough into dimensioned as-built documentation you can hand to anyone.
Insulation bids: cavity area, attic flats, and the numbers behind R-value
Insulation is sold by area and installed by cavity. A scan measures the areas; here is how the quantities fall out of them.
Trust, then verify: checking a scan against a laser measurer
The fastest way to get comfortable with scanning is to prove it to yourself. Here is the test that takes five minutes and settles the question.
Siding and exterior takeoffs from a LiDAR scan
Scanstead captures building exteriors as LiDAR meshes with wall-area estimates — enough to price a re-side without a ladder and a wheel.
Scanning basements, crawlspaces, and mechanical rooms
The least pleasant rooms in the house are also the hardest to measure with a tape — which makes them the best argument for scanning.
Measuring a kitchen for a cabinet order
Cabinet runs are priced by linear foot and ruined by a quarter inch. A scan gets you the layout and the pricing; the final order still gets a tape.
The two-minute scan check before you leave the driveway
Every rescan trip started with a scan that looked fine on site. Here is the short list that catches problems while the house is still behind you.
iPhone or iPad Pro: which one should you scan with?
Both have the same LiDAR sensor and run the same app. The difference is ergonomics on site versus a screen you can show a client.
Mirrors, glass, and the surfaces LiDAR lies about
LiDAR measures distance with light, so anything that redirects light can fool it. Four surfaces to watch for and what to do about each.
Stairs, landings, and split levels: how multi-level scans line up
Scanning a second floor is easy. Making it sit correctly above the first one is the interesting part — and stairs are how it happens.
Window and door replacement: counting and sizing in one pass
Replacement jobs live or die on the opening schedule. A scan builds the list for you — then you confirm the ones you are actually ordering.
Tile bids: bathrooms are small rooms with big numbers
A bathroom is the most measurement-dense room in the house per square foot. Floor, wet walls, wainscot, niches, and a dozen edges that all get priced.
Scanning an occupied house: furniture, clutter, and closed doors
Empty rooms scan beautifully. Real houses have sofas against the walls and a closet full of coats. Here is how to get clean walls anyway.
Drywall takeoffs: sheets, screws, and mud from measured wall area
Drywall is a wall-area problem with a sheet-count answer. A scan gives you the area; here is the arithmetic that turns it into a material list.
The top 7 LiDAR measurement apps, compared (2026)
Seven serious LiDAR scanning apps, one honest question for each — what's the deliverable, and how fast do you hold it? Full disclosure, we make one of them.
Why parametric models beat point clouds for estimating
A point cloud is a million answers to a question nobody asked. A parametric model is forty answers to the questions on your estimate. The deeper why.
Pricing a trim package from a scan
Baseboard, casing, and crown are perimeter-and-count problems — exactly what a room scan measures best. A worked example, room by room.
Show, don't sketch: sharing scans with clients
A homeowner can't read a floor plan, but they can spin their own house on a phone. How to use shared models to win the job.
The 20-minute site survey, start to finish
A repeatable walkthrough routine that leaves the driveway with a full house model, voice-note punch list, photos, and the numbers for the bid.
Flooring takeoffs: area is half the number
Square footage prices the material. Perimeter, doorways, and direction price the job. A scan hands you all four in one pass.
How accurate is iPhone LiDAR, really?
The honest answer: about an inch on a typical room, better on short runs, and completely sufficient for the jobs a bid depends on. Here's the nuance.
Scanstead vs. tap-to-draw floor plan apps
Guided floor-plan apps like magicplan sped up sketching. LiDAR removes the sketching. The difference shows up in the corners you didn't tap.
Scanstead vs. Matterport-style capture: the right tool for the job size
Dedicated capture cameras and hosted digital twins are impressive — and often more than a remodeling bid needs. Where each approach earns its keep.
Scanstead vs. 3D capture apps: parametric models, not point clouds
Apps like Polycam produce beautiful 3D meshes. Scanstead produces walls with lengths. If your output is an estimate, that difference is everything.
Scanstead vs. tape measure and laser: what actually changes
A laser measurer made the tape obsolete. LiDAR scanning makes the notepad obsolete too — here's an honest comparison of all three on a real walkthrough.
When the model looks like the house — photo-realistic scanning
Measurements convince estimators. Photos convince clients. High Fidelity mode projects real photos onto the scanned model so one capture does both.
Talk while you scan — voice notes pinned to the model
The details you notice during a walkthrough evaporate by the truck. Scanstead pins your voice notes to the exact spot you were looking at.
Outdoor scanning: lots, ground, and building exteriors
Scanstead doesn't stop at the front door. Trace lot outlines for area and perimeter, and capture building exteriors as LiDAR meshes with wall-area estimates.
Five scanning mistakes (and the thirty-second fixes)
Most bad scans come from the same five habits. Every one of them has a fix you can apply mid-walkthrough.
From scan to design tools with USDZ
Every Scanstead scan exports as USDZ — the 3D format that drops into SketchUp, Blender, and AR viewers. Here's what to do with it.
Wall area for painters: stop guessing from floor area
Most paint bids estimate wall area from square footage and a rule of thumb. LiDAR measures it directly — including what the rule of thumb misses.
Bidding a kitchen remodel from one walkthrough
Kitchens are the densest rooms in the house — cabinets, counters, openings, appliances. Here's how a single scan feeds a complete kitchen bid.
Scanning a whole house: room by room, floor by floor
One room is easy. Here's the workflow for capturing an entire house as a single aligned 3D model, including stairs, and what to do when a room needs a rescan.
How LiDAR actually measures a room
The sensor in your iPhone fires thousands of invisible light pulses a second. Here's how those pulses become wall lengths you can put in a bid.
Why we built Scanstead
Every job starts with measuring, and measuring by hand is the slowest, most error-prone part of the walkthrough. So we replaced it with a walk.