A Step by Step Guide to Estimate Flooring Quantities

Ordering flooring online can be a daunting prospect, but in our ever anxious plight to make the experience easier for our customers we have designed this step by step guide to measuring your floors. We already offer our Flooring Guru’s knowledge on which product to select, free of charge of course, but now we can help you order the correct amount. Buy too much and you may waste money on excessive material, don’t buy enough and you may waste money on delivery charges when topping up your order. Fear not chums, this guide will ensure you get your required quantity Bob on!

Initially, there are 2 measurements required here, the length and width of the room. It’s really important to measure the furthest points of every room including alcoves, recesses & doorways. The other thing to remember is allowing for extra material for the installer to “cut in”. When carpets are fitted they need to run at least 5cm up each wall so they can be trimmed more precisely to fit against your skirting boards.

Most carpets have a selection of widths, the most common being 4.00 and 5.00 metres but some manufacturers offer “multi widths” to help save wastage and can sometimes prevent the use of joins in some applications. The “width” always refers to the width of carpet that you decide to use, the “length” always refers to the other measurement whether It is longer or shorter than the width, for example… If your room is 2.70 x 3.90 (metres) you would select the 4-metre width and buy 2.75 metres in length, giving you 11m2 for that particular piece. If the carpet you have chosen is directional, for example, a stripe and you want the stripes to run through the longest length of the room you would need to select the 4-metre width and buy a length of 4 metres, giving you a total of 16m2. This example shows how important it is to take all of these possibilities into consideration when measuring your property.

When measuring areas like hallways, staircases and landings, each property will lend itself to different ideas and possibilities in order to keep your quantities down. As always, a trained professional will be able to identify how much carpet you are going to need relatively quickly but if you fancy a challenge just stick here for a few minutes because this guide should help you do it like the professionals!

• Draw a detailed plan of all of the flat areas involved, including any rooms that you intend to do in the same quality and colour as your hall, stairs and landing (HSL). Write each measurement (in metric) against each and every wall.
• Make a note of how many straight stairs you have and measure the width of these stairs. We recommend allowing 50cm in length for each straight step.
• Make a note of any ½ landings, winders & kites that you may have (kites and winders are triangular-shaped stairs that create a curve in your staircase). Measure the length and width of each of these steps remembering that the length is the measurement that runs over the nose of the step and the width is the measurement running from side to side as you look up the staircase.
• You’ll need to decide whether to use 4.00 or 5.00-metre width carpet. Make sure you check which widths are available in your chosen carpet before you make this decision as you don’t want to work it out in 5.00-metre width to realise your carpet only comes in 4.00-metre width!
• Now the fun part! Draw a rectangle on your piece of paper and write the width at the top of the page and then try and fit all of the pieces that you need into that rectangle, ensuring that all of your relevant measurements will work within the space you have allowed. Diagram 1 shows an example of a HSL plan.
• Remember, if you are carpeting some rooms in the same carpet that you intend to put on your stairs then you can use waste material from the rooms to use on the stairs, this may mean buying less carpet for your HSL.

In some cases, you may be able to save material by using one piece of carpet to do more than one area so it is always worth drawing a sketch of the areas you intend to do. See diagram 3 as an example. Don’t forget if you get stuck you can e-mail one of our Flooring Gurus with a copy of your plan and we can give it our seal of approval if you’re unsure.

Fortunately, underlay doesn’t have to be laid in one piece. Underlay can be used in numerous pieces to cover your floor before the carpets go down. Simply measure your floor space and buy that quantity. It is likely that you will need the same amount of underlay as you do carpet but in some cases, you may be able to save a bit of money by buying less underlay, the greater the area you are carpeting in one go the more likely it is that you will need less underlay. As an example when carpeting a whole house, let’s say in total you are buying 112m2 of carpet, you will probably only need approx. 105m2 of underlay, especially if you are carpeting your HSL along with straightforward rooms.

We sell gripper rods by the box. Each box contains 152 linear metres which is normally enough for an average-sized house. If you think you may need more then simply measure each wall where a new gripper is required and that will tell you if one box will suffice or not.

Our door bars are available at 90cm as standard, which will cover most standard-sized doorways. Longer lengths are available upon request. When you have decided which profile you require (carpet to carpet/carpet to tile etc…) then simply count how many doorways you have and order the correct amount of each profile accordingly.

Measuring for boxed products is very straightforward, unlike carpet you aren’t restricted to certain widths although you do have to buy full boxes so check how many m2 you get in each pack of your chosen floor so that you order the correct amount of boxes!

Start by drawing a diagram of the floor space you intend to cover. If it is an unusual shape then split it into smaller squares or rectangles so that it’s easier to work out each area separately and then add the quantities together to get your total figure. Diagram 2 shows an example of a floor plan for boxed products.

Once you have your total quantity figured out you will then have to add between 5-10% onto this figure for wastage and board selection. The smaller the area being covered the higher % of waste required. Bigger areas will require less waste. For instance, if you have a floor space of 12m2 then we would suggest allowing an extra 10% but if you are covering 100m2 then 5% extra should suffice. There are 2 reasons you need to allow for extra material when buying boxed product:

1. Waste - It's almost impossible to use each and every piece of a product like laminate and wood flooring. When cutting ends to finish off a row the piece that’s left can’t always be used in other areas.
2. Board selection – This is relevant to products like real-wood, laminate and luxury vinyl tile. Whether it’s yourself or a professional fitting your floor it’s always wise to check each board before laying it. If it is a real wood floor then it may have a large knot that you may not want in the centre of your floor so it is wise to cut these boards where the knot is and use them as end boards when completing or starting a new row. You should also consider if your chosen flooring product has a pattern repeat. Man-made products like laminate and luxury vinyl tiles (LVT) may have duplicated boards in some boxes so you will want to avoid laying two identical boards next to each other. Whilst installing two similar boards next to one another wouldn’t cause a flooring problem you may find the appearance detrimental to the overall aesthetics of your lovely new floor.