Starting a Doorframe Growth Chart? How to Make One That Lasts

A growth chart on the doorframe is one of the few family traditions that costs nothing, needs no equipment, and gets better the longer it runs. It’s also, twenty years on, the one thing in the house people can’t stand to leave. A little planning at the start makes it survive the repaint, the move, and the decade.

We spend our days working with families’ old marks, so this is written from the far end: what makes a chart easy to keep, and what makes it heartbreaking.

Where to put it

On the casing, not the wall. The casing is the flat trim around the door. It can be unscrewed from a house and carried away; a wall can’t. If the day ever comes when you have to leave, the marks on casing are an afternoon’s work to take. Marks on drywall are a patch job.

Pick a frame that’s not going anywhere. Not a closet you’ll rebuild, not the door to a room you might knock through. The kitchen or hallway doorframe is where most of these live, for a reason: people walk past it every day and the floor there is stable.

Pick a frame with a real floor. The measurement is from the finished floor to the mark. Carpet compresses, thresholds step up, a rug adds half an inch. Bare floor or tile at the base of the frame keeps year one and year twelve on the same footing.

Use the inside edge. Casing has a flat face and, usually, a profiled edge. Mark on the flat face nearest the door opening, where the child’s heels and back can sit against the jamb.

What to write with

Pencil. A soft pencil — 2B, or a carpenter’s pencil sharpened to a fine edge. It’s what the tradition looks like, it photographs beautifully, and it doesn’t bleed through paint if the frame is ever recoated. Press firmly; a firm pencil line sometimes leaves a dent in the wood that survives even a paint job, which has rescued more than one chart.

If you want ink, draw the line in pencil first, then go over it with a fine archival pen (the acid-free kind sold for scrapbooks). Two cautions. Ink on painted trim will ghost through future coats of latex paint, which is a nuisance for whoever paints it. And you can’t erase a mistake.

Not: ballpoint (skips on paint), Sharpie (bleeds and fades to brown), crayon (smears), or stickers (fall off, and the glue takes paint with it).

How to measure so the marks are true

This is the part most people skip, and it’s what makes the difference between a chart that’s a lovely picture and a chart that’s a record.

1. Shoes off. Heels, seat and shoulders against the frame. Chin level, eyes forward.
2. Set a hardcover book flat on top of their head, spine against the frame, and press it lightly down — hair compresses.
3. Draw the line along the bottom edge of the book. Short, clean, horizontal.
4. Write the name and the date beside it. Full date. “Age 4” is charming but “4/6/2031” is a date you can use.
5. Then measure it. Hook a tape measure on the floor, read the height at the line, and write it beside the name: 41⅜”. This number is what makes the chart transferable — to a new house, to a print, to the grandchildren’s frame.

The book trick is what the pediatrician’s stadiometer does, only free. Kids are shorter in the evening than the morning by as much as half an inch, so measure at the same time of day if you’re chasing accuracy.

When to mark

Once a year on the same day. Birthdays are the obvious choice; some families use the first day of school or New Year’s. The regular date is what lets you read the chart later — a run of birthday lines tells a story, and a scatter of “whenever we remembered” doesn’t.

Mark more often if it’s fun. But keep the annual line and label it clearly, so the record stays inside the fun.

Small things that turn out to matter

One column per child, side by side. Or one column with initials. Either works; what doesn’t is switching halfway.

Grown-ups too. A parent’s line at the top gives the chart a ceiling, and a child’s line passing it is a real event. Add the dog if the dog will hold still.

Write something. “Lost first tooth.” “Started walking.” “Taller than Grandma.” The heights are the data; the notes are why anyone keeps it.

Photograph it every year. Same day you mark it. Stand back, tape measure hooked on the floor running up beside the marks, no flash, shoot straight on. In ten years you’ll have the chart even if the house burns down, and if you ever want it printed life-size, you’ll have exactly what’s needed. The full method is in How to photograph height marks so they stay accurate.

Keep a ledger. A note in your phone: date, name, height. It takes ten seconds and it’s the backup for everything.

Planning for the day you leave

Nobody starts a growth chart thinking about the move. But if the marks are on casing, in pencil, with the heights written beside them and a photo taken every year, then every option is open when the day comes: take the trim, trace the marks, re-mark them in the new house, or have the originals printed life-size so the actual handwriting moves with you and you keep measuring on it. The families who find it hardest are the ones with marks on the drywall, in crayon, with no heights and no photos. You can do better than that in the next five minutes.

Related

• Every way to save the height marks on your doorframe when you move
• Painting over the height marks? Do these three things first
• How to photograph height marks so they stay accurate
• Questions people ask about doorframe height marks