Flooring Calculator

Flooring Calculator converts a room's area into packs of laminate, engineered or solid wood, which is how flooring is sold. Pack coverage varies from about 1.7 to 2.5 square metres, so the figure has to come off the pack rather than be assumed.

Ten per cent waste suits a straight lay in a rectangular room. Fifteen is more realistic for a diagonal lay, a herringbone pattern or a room with several doorways and alcoves, because each of those produces offcuts too short to start a new row with.

Underlay and beading are included because they are always needed and usually forgotten until the flooring is already down. Underlay is sold by the roll and covers the bare area without a waste allowance; beading or scotia runs round the perimeter to cover the expansion gap, which is itself the thing most often left out of a laminate installation.

The page shows its working, not just its answer. Where there is a formula it is printed with your own numbers substituted in, so you can check the result rather than take it on trust -- which is the difference between a calculator you can use for something that matters and one you cannot.

Everything runs inside your browser. What you type is never uploaded, never logged and never stored, and the calculator keeps working if your connection drops after the page has loaded.

• Shows packs to buy, floor area, including waste, underlay rolls and cost together, so you are not running it twice
• A results table you can read across
• Updates as you type, with no button to press and no page reload
• Copy the result in one click
• Free, no sign-up, and it runs entirely in your browser

The flooring calculator is used by writers, developers, students, marketers and anyone else who needs the job done once without installing software. Common cases include:

• Working out packs of laminate for a room
• Allowing extra for a herringbone or diagonal lay
• Including underlay and beading in the order
• Costing a flooring job by the pack