Flooring Calculators
Tile, laminate, hardwood, vinyl and carpet.
A 12 by 12 ft room is 144 ft², which is 144 twelve-inch tiles, about 8 boxes of laminate, or 16 square yards of carpet before waste. These eight calculators take the room and give you the order, in imperial or metric, with the cutting allowance already applied.
All 8 flooring calculators
Start with the floor, not the product
Every tool on this page begins from the same number: the area of the room in square feet or square metres. Measure the longest wall each way and multiply; for an L-shaped room, split it into two rectangles and add them. Only after that does the product matter, because what changes between materials is not the area but how it is sold — a box, a roll, a pallet or a single tile.
That is the reason a flooring order goes wrong. The area is rarely the mistake; buying 144 ft² of a product sold in 20 ft² boxes and ordering 7 boxes rather than 8 is.
How each flooring material is sold
The middle column is what turns an area into an order, and it is the figure most often guessed at. Always check it on the pack you are actually buying, because it varies by range.
| Material | Typically sold as | Allow for waste |
|---|---|---|
| Ceramic and porcelain tile | A box of a set tile count | 10% straight, 15% diagonal |
| Laminate | Box covering about 20 ft² | 10% |
| Hardwood | Bundle by the square foot | 10%, 15% for a pattern |
| Vinyl plank | Box covering 20 to 30 ft² | 10% |
| Carpet | Roll 12 ft wide, by the linear foot | Depends on room width |
| Underlayment | Roll covering about 100 ft² | 5 to 10% |
Carpet is the exception worth understanding before you price anything. It is not cut to your area — it comes off a roll of fixed width, usually 12 ft, so a room 13 ft across needs two widths and creates a strip of offcut that you pay for regardless. That is why carpet waste is a function of your room's dimensions rather than a flat percentage.
Tile is counted, not covered
Tile behaves differently from every other material here, and it is why it has three calculators of its own. You are not covering an area with a continuous material; you are fitting a whole number of rigid objects into it, separated by grout joints. Two consequences follow.
First, size drives the count enormously: a 12 × 12 in tile is exactly 1 per square foot, while a 12 × 24 in is 0.5 per square foot. Second, the grout joint means tiles are laid on a pitch of tile plus joint, so a 3 mm joint on small tile changes the count by several percent — around 5.7% on subway tile — while barely registering on 60 cm format. Ignoring the joint over-counts every time.
Then there is what goes under and between: thinset at about 85 ft² per 50 lb bag with a 1/4 in notch, and grout, which depends on tile size and joint width far more than on floor area.
Before you place the order
- Buy the waste with the floor, in one order. Dye lots and production batches shift, so a box bought later may not match. The offcuts are also your repair stock for the next decade.
- Check the box coverage on the pack rather than trusting a category average. Every calculator here lets you type in the figure printed on your own product.
- Round up to whole packs, never to the nearest. Seven and a bit boxes is eight boxes.
- Measure after the room is empty if you can, and check the diagonals: rooms that look square routinely are not.
Flooring Calculators: common questions
How much extra flooring should I buy?
10% for a straight layout in a simple rectangular room, 15% for a diagonal or herringbone pattern or for large-format tile, and more for a room with many alcoves and cuts. The offcuts double as repair stock, which matters once the range is discontinued.
Which flooring calculator should I use for a whole house?
Run each room separately and add the results, rather than entering the total floor area once. Waste is generated at the edges of each room, so a single 900 ft² figure understates the cuts compared with six 150 ft² rooms.
Do these flooring calculators work in metric?
Yes. Every one has a unit toggle for feet or metres, and the defaults change with it, so metric sizes are the sizes the metric market actually sells rather than converted imperial ones. A 60 cm tile is about 4% smaller than a 24 in tile.
Do I need underlayment under every floor?
Laminate and floating vinyl almost always need it for cushioning, sound and moisture. Glue-down and nailed hardwood usually do not, and tile needs a backer board or uncoupling membrane instead, which is a different product entirely.