Flooring calculator: how much flooring do I need?

How much flooring do I need? The math in words

1. Work out the floor area: length times width, both in feet, for each room, closet and hallway the floor runs into. The square footage calculator covers L shapes and cut-outs.
2. Add the extra for cuts and waste: 10% is standard for most layouts, and diagonal or herringbone may need closer to 15%.^[1]
3. Read what one box covers from the carton. It changes from product to product: two vinyl planks of the same 7 by 48 inch size come 23.64 square feet a carton from COREtec and 27.73 from Shaw.^[2][3] The calculator starts at the COREtec carton; type yours.
4. Divide the area with the extra by one box and round up to whole boxes.

Example: a 15 by 18 foot living room and a 3 by 10 foot hallway in one floor. Area: 270 + 30 = 300 square feet; plus 10% makes 330. In 23.64 square foot cartons: 330 ÷ 23.64 = 13.96, so 14 boxes.

How much extra flooring to buy

The extra for cuts and waste, by floor and layout^[1][4][5][2]

Floor and layout	Extra	Who says so
Vinyl plank or tile, straight lay	10%	Floor & Decor, "standard for most layouts"
Diagonal or herringbone	About 15%	Floor & Decor
Hardwood, straight lay	5% to 7%	Mullican Flooring, a hardwood maker
Hardwood on a diagonal	10% to 15%	Mullican Flooring
COREtec vinyl, its own calculator	15%	COREtec

The calculator starts at 10%. A room with many corners, a stair landing or a lower grade of wood with more pieces to cull sits toward the top of the range.^[5] Buy whole boxes from one batch, and keep a box for repairs.

How much flooring for a whole house

For several rooms, list each one with its length, width and area, add them, and put the extra on the total once. In the calculator, press Add a rectangle for each room, or type the total from the plan as one rectangle. Keep each product on its own list: tile in the bathroom and vinyl plank in the rest are two orders, each with its own extra and box size.

Count what the floor runs into: closets, the hallway, the space under a dishwasher if the floor goes under it. Leave out what it does not, such as a kitchen island's footprint, by setting that rectangle to Cut out. How to estimate materials from a floor plan walks through a real multi-room takeoff.

Every room's square footage from one walk

A flooring takeoff for a whole house is a tape, a sketch and a long column of numbers. PlaceAnew does it in one walk. Hold an iPhone or iPad with LiDAR (iPhone 12 Pro or a newer Pro model, or an iPad Pro from 2020 or later), walk through the rooms, and the floor plan comes out with every room named and measured, its square footage and the total. Type the total into this calculator and the box count is done. The scan also reads the floor that is there now, marked "estimate" when it is not sure, so the quote starts with what comes out.

The sizes hold up: in one walk of our own office, the office came out at 195 square feet against 197 on the hand-measured plan.^[6] Scanning, floor plans, 3D, editing, the kitchen designer with prices and exports are free. Estimate flooring from an iPhone scan shows a three-room order from a real scan.

Questions people ask