An elevation view is a two-dimensional drawing that shows what a building looks like from the outside (or inside) when you stand directly in front of it and look straight at it. Think of it as a flat, head-on portrait of a wall or facade, with no perspective distortion and no angle. It captures the vertical details that a floor plan can’t: the height of windows, the slope of a roof, the texture of exterior materials, and how all these elements relate to each other top to bottom.
How Elevation Views Work
Elevation drawings are based on a drafting method called orthographic projection. Instead of trying to show a building as your eye would naturally see it (with depth and vanishing points), it flattens one face of the building onto a single plane. Every measurement stays true to scale, which makes elevations useful as working documents rather than just pretty pictures. A window that’s three feet wide in real life will measure three feet wide on the drawing (once you account for the scale ratio).
The result looks like you’re standing infinitely far away, staring directly at one wall. There’s no sense of depth, which is exactly the point. Depth is handled by other drawing types. The elevation’s job is to communicate everything happening on that one vertical surface, precisely and measurably.
Exterior vs. Interior Elevations
Most of the time, when someone says “elevation,” they mean an exterior elevation. A full set of architectural drawings typically includes elevations of every face of the building: front, back, left side, and right side. These show the overall shape, roofline, window and door placement, siding or cladding materials, and how the building meets the ground.
Interior elevations serve a different purpose. They show the inside surface of a specific wall, and they’re especially common in kitchens, bathrooms, and any room with built-in cabinetry or detailed finishes. A kitchen interior elevation, for example, will show upper and lower cabinets, the number and spacing of shelves, countertop materials, appliance locations (with custom sizing for the refrigerator or range), light fixtures, and even electrical outlet placement. These drawings give contractors the detail they need to build things exactly as designed.
What You’ll See on an Elevation Drawing
An exterior elevation typically includes:
- Windows and doors: Their exact size, style, and position on the wall
- Roof pitch and shape: How steep the roof is and where it changes direction
- Wall materials: Callouts indicating brick, wood siding, stucco, or other finishes
- Vertical dimensions: Floor-to-floor heights, the height of the ridgeline, and how far the building sits above grade
- Trim and details: Railings, moldings, columns, and other decorative or structural features
Interior elevations get more granular. In a kitchen remodel, for instance, the elevation will call out specific materials by name, show shelving configurations inside cabinets (including how many shelves to build and whether they’re adjustable), indicate lighting like puck lights above counters, and reference section drawings that detail how a cabinet door handle attaches or how a shelf is constructed. Upper cabinets often appear in dashed lines to distinguish them from lower cabinets beneath the countertop.
How Elevations Differ From Plans and Sections
A floor plan is drawn from above, as if you sliced horizontally through the building about four feet off the ground and looked down. It shows the layout: room sizes, wall positions, door swings, and stair locations. It tells you nothing about how tall anything is.
An elevation fills that gap. It’s drawn from a vertical plane, looking straight at a surface, so it captures height relationships. But it only shows what’s visible on that surface. It won’t reveal what’s behind the wall or inside a cavity.
That’s where a section drawing comes in. A section also shows a vertical view, but it slices through the building like cutting a loaf of bread in half. It exposes the internal structure: wall thickness, insulation layers, how floors connect to walls, and the relationship between different levels. If an elevation is a portrait, a section is an X-ray.
Scale and Reading the Drawing
Elevation drawings are always drawn to scale so that measurements can be taken directly from them. In the U.S., residential elevations are commonly drawn at one-eighth inch equals one foot. That means every eighth of an inch on paper represents one foot of real building. When more detail is needed for a specific area, architects will draw an enlarged elevation of that portion at a quarter inch equals one foot, making it twice as large and easier to read.
For bigger projects or when the full building needs to fit on one sheet, the scale may shrink to something like 3/64 of an inch equals one foot. In metric systems, common scales include 1:50 and 1:100, meaning one unit on paper equals 50 or 100 units in reality. The scale is always noted on the drawing, usually right below it.
Floor plans, building elevations, and building sections for the same project are often drawn at the same scale so you can cross-reference between them without converting.
Why Elevations Matter for Permits and Construction
Elevation drawings aren’t just design tools. They’re required documents in the building permit process. When you submit plans for a new building or renovation, the local building department uses elevations to check code compliance. They verify that exterior walls meet fire-rating requirements, that the building sits at the correct setback distance from property lines, and that accessible routes (like ramps with proper slopes) connect the parking area to the entrance.
Contractors rely on elevations for practical construction decisions: how much siding to order, where to frame window openings, and what height to set finish materials. Plumbers use plumbing elevations (a specialized version showing drain and vent pipes in vertical view) to map out how waste lines travel through the building. Without elevation drawings, there’s no reliable way to communicate the vertical dimension of a building from designer to builder.