The NORBALT living conditions project consists of comprehensive living condition surveys that were conducted simultaneously in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in 1994 and 1999. The project was coordinated by Fafo Institute for Applied Social Science in Oslo, Norway, and implemented in cooperation with local partners. In this article we describe the NORBALT project, and discuss some of the choices that were made in developing a survey tool to be used for both in-depth descriptions of living conditions within individual countries, and analyses of cross-national and regional variation. The surveys were designed based on the Scandinavian model of living conditions analysis, but particular aspects important for transition economies and specific regional aspects were also taken into account. In view of a possible future integration into the European Union, it has also been a goal to enable comparisons with established European surveys. We argue that in cross-national surveys, due to language and cultural differences, objective indicators of living conditions are more robust than subjective ones, and we recommend greater care in interpretation of questions that ask for subjective evaluation.