Whether you’ll be buying wood, vinyl, or laminate flooring, or carpeting your floor, you’ll need accurate measurements. Keep these three measuring tips for calculating square footage for flooring in mind to help you figure out how much flooring to order.
Round Inches Up
It’s unlikely that the room or rooms you plan to cover with new flooring are precisely 10 by 12, 12 by 15, or any other exact number of feet long or wide. When you measure length and width to calculate square footage, you may end up with a measurement that ends in a fraction of an inch. If that happens, round up to the next inch.
What To Do With Inches You Rounded
Measuring your room is a little more complicated than just multiplying the length by the width: if your room measures X feet and Y inches, you’ll have to figure out the fraction of a foot that those Y inches represent. Do this by dividing the inches in your length or width measurement by 12. That will give you a decimal expression to add to the X feet.
For example, if your room is 15 feet 9 inches long, you’ll divide 9 by 12 to get .75. Your length measurement is 15.75. Do the same for your width measurement, and then multiply the result for the width by the length measurement. This gives you the square footage of flooring you’ll need.
Measure Oddly Shaped Rooms in Sections
Your room may be L-shaped, have closets, or include bays or recessed areas. Measure each section of the room, and then add those measurements together to find the square footage of materials you’ll need.
If your room has a half-circle recess, you may need a little refresher in high school geometry on how to calculate the area of a circle. Measure the length and width through the center of the area. Then, divide the length in half (radius), and multiply that by the width.
Good so far? Now, multiply the result of your half-length times width by 3.14 (“pi”) to get the area of the space if it were a complete circle. Finally, divide that result in half to get the area of the half-circle recess in your room. Whew!
These three measuring tips for calculating square footage for flooring wouldn’t be complete if without a reminder to add a little extra to your measurement to allow for pattern matching and cuts made to accommodate oddly shaped areas. A good rule of thumb is to add 10 percent over your calculated square footage to cover any necessary adjustments during installation.
Among flooring stores in Portland, Oregon, Portland Floor offers a customer-focused shopping experience, with a showroom organized by color so you can quickly find the type of flooring you want in the color you need. We also provide expert installation and flooring repair services. Ask us all your flooring questions about carpet, vinyl, laminate, engineered hardwood, or floor refinishing. We’re happy to help you choose your new floors!