Flooring Measuring Guide

When thinking about carpeting or changing the flooring in your home, working out for yourself how much material you'll need may sound like a bit of a challenge initially but in actual fact, it's relatively straightforward. To help any doubters, our team of experts have put together this concise guide on the pointers you need to follow when measuring up your project for an upcoming installation.

Possibly the best strategy for measuring your home is to sketch out a floorplan of the areas you would like to carpet. This drawing does not need to be architect-grade (though if you have plans of this detail this is great!) - so long as you consider some of the basic steps outlined below.

1. Download and print out our handy floor planning sheet to help create your floor plan.
2. Take every single measurement that you can, it's important to make sure your measurements go into any alcoves, recesses, or bay windows for example.
3. Always measure from the widest point in these areas. Don't measure from skirting boards, ensure it's wall to wall from the widest points. Measuring from skirting boards for example could leave you short on the big day.
4. When taking your measurements, take them from floor level. Don't measure wall-to-wall from hip height for example. It's not uncommon for walls to narrow towards the ceiling especially in older properties.
5. Don't round up or down. List your exact measurements against the walls in question as shown on your drawn plan.
6. Make sure you measure into your doorways. In the vast majority of cases, your carpet will join the adjacent room in the middle of the doorway, not the wall.

Your staircase will be one of the more complicated areas to measure, due to the addition of the vertical 'risers' and the unusual shape of any 'kite' or 'winder' steps that you may have. Firstly, make a note of how many straight flights you have and measure the nose width, riser height, and tread depth of these stairs. Next, take note of any half-landings, winders, and kites that you may have (kites and winders are triangular-shaped steps that create a turn in your staircase - see section image) and measure the nose width, riser height, and tread depth of these steps.

More often than not, you'll be able to make sure of waste material from larger rooms on your stairs - provided they're of the same carpet and colour. One important consideration is pile direction, which should be pointing down the staircase, flowing with gravity rather than against it. Installing it in this way has proven wear benefits and will avoid any unsightly pile separation issues.

Now that you have the exact sizes of each area of your project, it's now time to add a bit extra onto each measurement for each room to ensure there is enough for 'cutting in' by the installer. We recommend adding at least 25cm onto each length in each area, leaving 12.5cm on either side for wastage. Whilst some may say this is a lot to add on, we prefer being safe than sorry! Unless there's a real discrepancy in the net measurements you took of your areas, this will be plenty and will make sure your installation day is a breeze.

The tricky part after adding 25cm onto each measurement is to work out the most cost-effective way in which your chosen carpet will fit into each area while following key considerations such as pile direction, pattern repeat, and waste management. The good news is, now that you've gone through our little detailed measuring guide you can send these to our team of flooring experts who will be able to take these floor plans and work out exactly how much you'll need for your project. We have years of experience quantifying flooring projects, so why not take a photo or scan your floor plan and let us take a look for you? Please send in your floor plans to: info@flooringmegastore.co.uk.

Fortunately, ordering underlay is much more straightforward than carpet and it's a safe bet that if you order the same quantity of underlay as your carpet (once the cut sizes for each area is confirmed), you'll have more than enough. Underlay typically comes in much smaller rolls than carpet and because it will be hidden beneath your lovely new floor, it doesn't matter how many joins are required to achieve full coverage. This means that with proper calculation, you can end up with next to no wastage in the underlay department!

We provide gripper rods in full boxes, each containing 152 linear metres. One full box will typically be enough to cover an average-sized house, though if you have a particularly large property or are unsure, we'll be able to advise what's best.

Our 'dual purpose' gripper works for both subfloor types (wooden and concrete), so no matter what subfloor you have this will be a perfect choice.

Most of our door bars are available in 90cm lengths as standard, which will cover a single average-sized doorway. Longer lengths are available upon request. When you have decided which profiles you need (singles, doubles, z-edge etc) then simply count how many doorways you have and order the correct amount of each profile accordingly.