Measuring & Calculating For Hardwood Flooring

Before you go shopping online, or offline, it helps to estimate how much hardwood flooring you will need for your interior areas you want to cover. Here is a quick and simple way to estimate the total square footage of hardwood flooring required in order to cover a room.

Measuring the area

  • Square off each section of the area you are going to install hardwood flooring so you can measure the width and length to calculate the square footages.
  • Then add the square footage for each section together to get the total square footage for the area you plan on installing flooring in.
  • Add 5% to the total square footage for waste and extra pieces. (Width * Length = Total Square Feet * 1.05)

Note: Most hardwood flooring is sold in full cartons only. So you will need to know how many square feet are in a carton. Then divide your total square footage by the square feet per carton and round up to the nearest carton.

(Total Square Feet of Area / Square Feet per Carton = Number of Cartons (rounded up to the nearest integer to get full carton)

(Number of Cartons * Square Feet per Carton = Total Sqaure Feet you are actually buying)

If you have an iPhone or iPad go to the iTunes App store and download the Flooring Calculator Lite. It is a free, slick little application that will help you compute your square footages and estimated cost for material.