A growth chart is a one-of-a-kind record. Years of pencil lines live on a single piece of canvas or a single door frame, and there's no second copy unless you make one. A move, a leaky pipe, a fresh coat of paint or a toddler with a crayon can undo in an afternoon what took years to collect.

The fix is small. Below is a backup system for your growth chart measurements that adds about five minutes to each mark: how to photograph marks so they stay readable, a measurement log template you can set up in any spreadsheet, and where to keep both. If you already have years of marks, there's a catch-up plan for those too.

Why back up growth chart marks at all?

In short: the chart is the keepsake, but the numbers are the history, and right now they probably exist in only one place. Here's how marks usually get lost:

• Moving. Door-frame marks stay with the house, and even portable charts can go missing in a storage bin or a mislabeled box.
• Painting and repairs. A move-out paint job or a renovation can cover a door frame in a single coat.
• Water, damp and sun. A basement leak or humid storage can blur marks, and years of direct window light can fade them. Our guide to keeping a canvas growth chart from fading in sunlight covers the sun side.
• Helpful little hands. Kids love adding their own "marks," and a younger sibling's scribbles can crowd out an older sibling's lines.
• Time. Pencil smudges, and dates squeezed next to crowded marks get harder to read every year.
• Two homes. When kids are measured at both parents' houses or at a grandparent's, the full record is never on one wall.

A backup doesn't replace the chart. It just means the story survives if the chart doesn't.

Photos, spreadsheet or paper: what each backup saves

Each format protects something different. Photos keep the look of the chart: the handwriting, the crowded dates, siblings' lines side by side. A written log keeps the exact numbers. You want both.

Rule of thumb: photos for memory, the log for accuracy, paper for when the tech fails.

How to photograph growth chart marks so they're readable later

Most growth chart photos are snapped from standing height, at an angle, in dim evening light. Years later you can see a line, but not where it falls. These habits fix that:

1. Date the mark on the chart first. Write the date, plus a name or initial if siblings share the chart, right next to the line. Some sharing and messaging apps strip the date from a photo's file, so the date should show in the picture itself.
2. Use soft daylight, not flash. Flash washes out faint pencil and glares on glossy paint. A bright window across the room or a lamp off to one side works better.
3. Get level with the mark. Crouch or kneel so the phone is at the same height as the new line, pointed straight at the wall. Turning on your camera's grid lines helps keep the chart's edge square.
4. Use the regular lens, not ultra-wide. The 0.5x lens bends straight lines near the edges of the frame. Step back and use 1x instead.
5. Get a measurement in the frame. On a printed chart, include the nearest printed number. On a door frame or plain wall, hold a tape measure flat beside the mark with the zero end on the floor.
6. Take two shots. One close-up of the new mark and its date, and one wider shot of that child's whole section of the chart.

Once a year, also photograph the full chart top to bottom. If it's too tall for one clean frame, shoot it in overlapping sections from the same distance, so each section shares at least one printed number with the next.

Then rename or caption the close-up in this format: 2025-07-14_Mia_39.25in. Starting with year-month-day makes files sort in order on their own, and having the height in the name means you can find a number without opening a single photo.

The growth chart measurement log: a template to copy

In short: one row per measurement, one tab per child, decimals instead of fractions.

The log is the part of your backup you'd actually use to rebuild a chart, so it's worth setting up properly once. Any spreadsheet app works. So does a lined page in the back of a baby book, if you'd rather keep it on paper. Here's what three rows look like for one child:

To start your own, type these nine headers across the first row of a new sheet, one per column:

Date | Child | Height (in) | Height (cm) | Change since last (in) | Measured by | Where | Photo file | Notes

A few setup tips make the sheet do the work for you:

• Write heights as decimals: 39.25, not 39 1/4. A spreadsheet can't do math on a fraction typed as text.
• Let the sheet convert to centimeters. With inches in column C, type =ROUND(C2*2.54,1) in D2 and fill it down.
• Track growth automatically. With each child on their own tab, sorted by date, =C3-C2 in E3 shows the change since the last mark. Leave E2 blank.
• Log the tape-measure number, not only where the mark lands on the chart. If a chart ever gets rehung a little high or low, the tape number is still right.
• Use Notes for context: shoes on or off, time of day (kids measure a touch taller in the morning), who helped, what your child said. Those details are what make the log fun to read in ten years.

One note: this is a family keepsake, not a medical record. Your pediatrician measures at checkups and tracks growth on clinical charts. If a number on your wall ever surprises you, bring it up at the next visit; HealthyChildren.org, the American Academy of Pediatrics' site for parents, is a good place for general growth questions.

Where to keep your backup so one bad day can't erase it

The goal: no single loss, whether a phone, an account or a house, takes everything. Aim for three copies in at least two places.

• A dedicated, shared photo album. Not just your camera roll. Make one album per child and share it with a partner or grandparent, so someone else holds a copy.
• The log in cloud storage. Save the spreadsheet to a cloud drive rather than only on a laptop, so it survives a dead hard drive or a lost phone.
• A printed copy, once a year. Print the log and one full-chart photo, then file them away from the chart itself: with important papers, in the baby book, or in an envelope mailed to a grandparent. Paper doesn't care about forgotten passwords.

If your kids are measured in more than one home, the shared log is also the easiest way to keep one continuous record. Our guide to keeping a growth chart tradition going between two homes walks through a shared measuring setup that works for both households.

The 5-minute routine for every new mark

Tie the backup to the measuring itself so it never becomes a separate chore. Whenever you mark the chart, whether that's on birthdays, the first day of school or a fixed date like a New Year's Day height check, run through this list:

• ☐  Shoes off, heels and back against the wall, eyes looking straight ahead
• ☐  A hardcover book held flat on top of the head and against the wall; mark along its underside
• ☐  Date the mark, plus a name or initial if siblings share the chart
• ☐  Check the height with a tape measure from the floor
• ☐  Take the close-up photo and the wider shot
• ☐  Add one row to the log
• ☐  Move the photos into the shared album and rename the close-up
• ☐  Once a year: full-chart photo, print the log, and check the chart still hangs at the right height

That last check matters more than it sounds. Measure from the floor to any printed number on the chart. If the tape and the chart disagree, fix the hanging before you add a new mark, especially after a move.

Already have years of marks? Back them up this week

If your chart or door frame already holds a few years of lines, don't wait for the next measuring day. Set aside half an hour and backfill.

1. Photograph everything before you touch anything: a wide shot of the whole chart or door frame in its room, then a close-up of each mark with a tape measure in the frame.
2. Find faint marks with side light. Hold a flashlight almost flat against the wall and sweep it slowly. Pencil lines catch the light when it comes in at a low angle.
3. Log each mark. Read its height with a tape from the floor and copy whatever date is written beside it. If a date is missing or smudged, enter your best guess and write "approx." in Notes.
4. Touch up last, if at all. If you decide to darken faded lines, finish the photos and log first so you have a record of the originals.

If you're moving out of a home with door-frame marks, do this early, not in the last few days when rooms are packed and walls may already be patched. Our week-by-week plan for helping kids say goodbye to the old house builds this step into the move. Renters, the same applies to any marks on a wall you'll repaint before handing back the keys.

If the chart is ever lost or damaged, rebuild it from the log

This is where the habit pays off. With dates and tape-measure heights on file, you can re-mark a new chart line by line:

1. Hang the new chart, then check with a tape measure that its printed numbers match the real height from the floor.
2. Work through the log one child at a time, oldest row first, marking each height and writing its original date beside it.
3. Keep the old full-chart photos. The new chart carries the numbers; the photos carry the original handwriting.

It won't be the same pencil lines. But every height and date will be back on the wall, and the tradition can pick up where it left off.

Portability also lowers the risk to begin with, since a canvas chart comes down off the wall and moves with you in a way a door frame can't. Our Canvas Kids Growth Chart ($44) is cotton canvas with a scale that starts at the 6-inch mark to clear the baseboard, hangs from a silver grommet, and comes with a fabric-safe pen for marking. One honest caveat: it can't be washed or dried, so a spilled cup is one more reason to keep the photo-and-log habit going.

Canvas Kids Growth Chart

$44.00

View the Canvas Kids Growth Chart

If you take one thing from this, keep it small: next time you mark the chart, take one straight-on photo and add one row to a log. Do that every time, print it once a year, and the marks you've spent years collecting will always have a second copy somewhere safe.

Frequently asked questions