Flooring calculator
The count divides your floor area by the coverage you enter and rounds up. It does not account for a running-bond pattern, thresholds, or the closets and nooks a real floor has, so confirm the number against the room and keep offcuts for repairs.
Enter the room size and the coverage printed on the box, adjust the waste for your layout, and the tool works out the floor area, pads it, divides by a box and rounds up. The result is the number of whole boxes to buy.
Ejemplo resuelto
A 16 ft × 12.5 ft room is 200 square feet. Adding 10% for waste makes 220 sq ft of flooring to lay. At 20 sq ft per box that is 220 ÷ 20 = 11, so you buy 11 boxes. Drop the coverage to 18 sq ft a box and the same room climbs to 13 boxes — which is why the box figure matters.
En la obra
A whole main floor, one product. Living 18 × 14 = 252, dining 12 × 11 = 132, hall 14 × 4 = 56, two closets at 6 × 2 = 24. Total 464 ft². Plank runs continuous through the doorways, so it is one takeoff: 464 × 1.1 = 510 ft², ÷ 20 ft² a box = 25.5 → 26 boxes. Do the rooms separately and round each up and you land at 28 — two boxes you did not need, or two spares, depending on how you look at it.
The long-plank problem. 48 in planks in a 10 ft 6 in room: each row is 126 in, which is 2 planks and a 30 in piece, and the 18 in offcut is too short to start the next row if you want the joints staggered by more than a foot. That room wastes more than 10% no matter how careful you are — set 15% and let the tool carry it.
Boxes come in one lot. Buy the whole order at once and check the lot number on every carton. Twenty-six boxes from two lots is two shades of the same colour meeting in the middle of the hall, and no waste factor fixes that.
What went wrong?
Quick referencefor flooring
- Cajas
- (area × (1 + waste)) ÷ box coverage, rounded up
- Desperdicio
- straight and simple 8–10% · diagonal, long planks, many doorways 15%
- Boxes per 100 ft² at 10% waste
- 20 ft² box: 5.5 → 6 · 18 ft²: 6.1 → 7 · 24 ft²: 4.6 → 5
- A square metre
- 10.76 ft² — a 2 m² box is 21.5 ft²
- Plank rows
- room width ÷ plank width — the last row is a rip, and the rip is waste
Waste & overagewhat to add, and why
- Installers keep 7–10% over for a plank floor laid straight and 15% for a diagonal or herringbone, because end cuts at every row lose a piece. The waste field starts at 10%.
- Buy a box beyond the count and keep it — a dye-lot match for a replacement plank years later is not a thing.
- Wide rooms with the planks running the long way waste less than the short way; if you can pick, pick the direction with fewer rows.
Mistakes to catchbefore you order
- Trusting the box coverage on the sticker without opening one — some boxes quote gross, some net; the coverage field is the biggest lever on the count.
- Forgetting the closet floor and the doorway thresholds when measuring the room.
- Reading the box count for one room and buying that many for the whole floor; run each room and add, or type the total area.
La fórmula
boxes = (area × (1 + waste)) ÷ coverage per box, rounded up
Floor area is length times width. The waste factor lifts it to cover offcuts and the odd damaged plank, then dividing by the box coverage turns square footage into boxes. Rounding up is the honest step: a floor short by half a box is a floor you cannot finish.
Preguntas
- How many boxes of flooring do I need?
- Measure the floor area, add a waste margin, then divide by the coverage printed on the box and round up. A 200 sq ft room with 10% waste is 220 sq ft of planks; at 20 sq ft a box that is 11 boxes. Coverage varies a lot between products, so it is an editable field here rather than a fixed number.
- What waste factor should I use for laminate or vinyl plank?
- Around 8 to 10% for a plain rectangular room laid straight, which the default covers. Bump it toward 15% for a diagonal run, a busy floor with lots of doorways and closets, or long planks where the offcut from each row is too short to start the next. Keep a few spare planks from the same lot for future repairs.
- Do I need to match the box coverage exactly?
- Use the number on the actual product you are buying. Two boxes that look the same can carry different square footage depending on plank size and how many are packed, and that difference decides whether you are one box short on install day. Type the real figure and the count follows.
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