Flooring calculator

Enter the room and this returns the area to order, including waste. The waste factor is the part most estimates get wrong: measuring the floor is easy, and ordering exactly that much is how people end up half a box short on the last row.

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The formula

Length times width gives the floor area. Multiply by one plus the waste factor and round up to whole boxes. A 14-by-12 room is 168 square feet, which at a ten percent waste factor means ordering 185 square feet.

Rooms that are not rectangles get measured in rectangles: split the floor into sections, work out each one, and add them. Closets and doorway thresholds count if the flooring runs into them, which it usually does.

Why the waste factor changes with the layout

Every cut at a wall produces an offcut, and the question is whether that offcut can start the next row. In a straight lay it usually can, so ten percent covers breakage and the odd bad plank. In a diagonal or herringbone layout the angled offcuts rarely fit anywhere else, and the same floor needs closer to twenty percent.

HomeAdvisor's published figure is 10 to 15 percent, stated for tile, to cover damage during installation and future repairs. The twenty percent row above extends that logic to patterned layouts and is a working rule rather than a figure from that source — the distinction matters, and it is why it is labeled here rather than presented as published data.

What this leaves out

Taking up the old floor, which HomeAdvisor prices at $1.50 to $3.50 per square foot and which doubles if there is adhesive underneath. Underlayment at $0.50 to $5.40. Subfloor repair, which nobody can quote until the old floor is off. Transition strips, trim and quarter round. Moving furniture at $60 to $120 per hour.

On a straightforward click-lock floor over a sound subfloor those extras are minor. On a 1970s kitchen with two layers of vinyl and possible asbestos backing — HomeAdvisor puts asbestos removal at $5 to $20 per square foot — they can exceed the flooring itself.

Where flooring sits in a budget

Flooring is usually the second or third line in a room budget rather than the first. In a kitchen HomeAdvisor puts it at $1,000 to $4,000 against cabinetry taking around 30 percent of the whole job — the breakdown is in what a kitchen remodel costs. For a whole-room figure, the remodel cost calculator works from square footage, and the tile calculator handles the case where the floor is tile.