When you purchase a house, you want to make it yours. You repaint walls, buy new light fixtures, and replace cabinet hardware and towel racks.

But how far should those new pendant lights hang from the kitchen ceiling? What’s the ideal height for a towel rack on the bathroom wall?

This Old House magazine has a guide to standard heights, widths, clearances, depths, and angles for features in every room of your new house.

Because people may appreciate your unique decorating style, but they won’t appreciate banging their heads on a pendant hung lower than they were expecting.