Flooring calculator
Room size, the pattern, and what a box covers. Boxes to order, waste included, so the dye lot matches and the last row is not a second trip.
Your numbers stay in this browser. Nothing is sent anywhere.
How it is figured
Area is length times width; an L-shaped room is two rectangles added. Add waste for the cuts at the walls and the pieces that get damaged. Divide by what a box covers and round up: the leftover box is your repair stock, and it is from the same dye lot.
Waste depends on the pattern more than the room. Straight lay in a rectangular room wastes about ten percent. Diagonal, small rooms with many doorways, and anything with a border run fifteen. Herringbone and chevron run twenty or more.
Carpet is sold by the square yard from 12 foot rolls, so the waste depends on the roll width and the seams, and the installer measures it, not the calculator. Use the square yards here as a sanity check.
From the quantity to the bid
The calculator gives you the material count. The bid gives the customer one price and the scope in plain words, and keeps the count as your cost math. The how to bid flooring jobs guide works the whole price with example numbers, and the flooring proposal template is the layout. Materials at cost plus markup, labor at your rate, then the job price calculator adds them up and sets the deposit.
Questions contractors ask
How much flooring do I need for 1,000 square feet?
About 1,100 square feet for a straight lay, 1,150 for diagonal, 1,200 for herringbone. At 20 square feet a box that is 55 to 60 boxes.
Should I buy extra flooring?
Yes, the waste plus one box. Flooring comes in dye lots, and the box you buy a year later for a repair will not match.
Does the calculator include underlayment?
Underlayment is the room area in square feet without waste, rounded up to the roll. Most rolls are 100 square feet.
How do I bid a flooring job?
Material at cost plus markup, removal, install by the foot, subfloor prep and transitions as their own lines. The <a href="/guides/how-to-bid-flooring-jobs">flooring bidding guide</a> prices a plank install.
The other tools
- Price book builder. Pick your trade, set what you pay yourself, your overhead and your margin. Every job in the book is priced with your rate, with the math showing. PDF and Excel.
- Hourly rate calculator. What to charge per hour, from what you want to take home, your overhead, and the hours you can bill.
- Markup vs margin calculator. Enter a cost and a markup, see the price and the real margin. Or go the other way.
- Job price calculator. Materials, labor, markup, and the deposit to ask for. The number that goes on the bid.
- Deposit calculator. Job price and the materials you buy first, out comes the deposit, the schedule, and the payment terms line for the bid.
- Concrete calculator. Slab, footing, or post holes to cubic yards and bags, with the order-over built in.
- Roofing calculator. Footprint and pitch to squares, bundles of shingles, rolls of underlayment, and waste.
- Drywall calculator. A room to sheets of 4x8 or 4x12, with the mud, tape and screws to finish it.
- Paint calculator. A room to gallons of paint for walls, ceiling and trim, by the coat, primer included if needed.
- Fence calculator. A fence run to posts, rails, pickets and the concrete to set them.
- Deck calculator. Deck size to boards, joists, screws and footings, for composite or wood.
- Mulch and soil calculator. Bed area and depth to cubic yards of mulch, soil or compost, and bags.
- Tile calculator. Area, tile size and pattern to tiles and boxes, waste included.
- Gravel calculator. Area and depth to cubic yards and tons of gravel, crushed stone or base.
- Estimate checker. Paste the bid you are about to send. A score out of ten and the exact lines it is missing.
- Invoice generator. Your business, the customer, the lines, tax, the deposit already paid. A clean PDF invoice, no account.
When the number is right, put it on an estimate the customer signs on their phone. Type the job and see it, no account needed. 30 days free, then $29 a month.