Free tool
Flooring calculator
Square footage is the easy half. What you actually pay for is whole boxes of a specific floor — so this one rounds up against the real catalog and gives you a price, from $1.59 per sq ft.
Work out what you need
Enter a room size to begin.
Material only. Freight is quoted against your ZIP once the box count is set, and installation is separate.
How to measure a room for flooring
Length times width, in feet. That is the whole method for a rectangular room, and most rooms are rectangular enough.
- Measure to the wall, not the baseboard. The plank runs under the baseboard, or under quarter-round fitted after. Measuring to the trim under-orders every time.
- Split an L-shape into two rectangles and add them. Add a row above for each.
- Do not deduct small obstructions. A kitchen island, a hearth, base cabinets — under roughly 10 square feet, leave them in. The material runs past them and the offcuts become your spare.
- Do deduct a large fixed obstruction — a staircase footprint, a built-in that runs floor to ceiling.
- Include closets you are flooring, and doorway thresholds where the floor carries through to the next room.
Measure twice at both ends of the room. Walls in older Florida houses are rarely parallel, and if the two measurements differ, use the larger one.
How much extra flooring to buy
The waste allowance covers the offcuts at the ends of rows, the boards you cut around door jambs, and the occasional damaged plank. It is not optional and it is not padding.
- 5% — a plain rectangular room, square corners, straight lay. Rare.
- 10% — the standard, and the right default for almost every job.
- 15% — diagonal or herringbone layouts, or a floor plan broken up by closets, angles and doorways. Diagonal cuts throw away far more at every wall.
One more reason not to shave it: dye lots. Boards are printed in production runs and runs differ slightly. Ordering a second time months later will very likely not match, so the spare box you have left over is also your repair stock for the next twenty years. Keep it flat, indoors, out of the sun.
Why box count matters more than square footage
Flooring is sold by the box, not by the square foot, so the number you actually pay for is always rounded up to a whole box. Two floors with the same price per square foot can land at different totals purely because their boxes cover different areas.
Across the floors we stock, box coverage runs from 18.82 to 30.17 square feet. On an 850 square foot job that difference can be a whole box either way. It is the reason a generic calculator gives you a number and a real one gives you a price.
The calculator above uses the actual coverage and actual price of whichever floor you pick, so the figure matches the floor's own page.
What the number does not include
- Freight. Quoted against your ZIP once the box count is known. Flooring is heavy and it ships by pallet.
- Installation. Typically $2 to $4 per square foot in Florida, more if the subfloor needs levelling.
- Trims. Stair nose, reducers, T-mould and end caps are priced separately. Most of our collections have matching trims.
- Underlayment. Usually nothing to add — every floor we stock has an IXPE pad already attached.
If you want the delivered number rather than the material number, run the calculation, then send us the box count and your ZIP and we will quote the freight against it.
Common questions
Ten percent over your measured area for a standard straight lay. Go to fifteen percent if the room is broken up by closets, angles or a lot of doorways, or if you are laying on a diagonal or in a herringbone pattern — both waste far more at the cuts. Five percent is only safe in a plain rectangular room with square corners.
Length times width, in feet, for each rectangle. Break an L-shaped room into two rectangles and add them. Measure to the wall, not to the baseboard, and do not subtract kitchen islands or cabinets under about 10 square feet — you want the material to run under and past them, and the offcuts are your spare.
Take your area, add the waste percentage, then divide by the coverage of one box and round up. Box coverage varies by product — ours run from 18.82 to 30.17 square feet — which is why a box count is only meaningful once you have picked a floor. The calculator above does it per floor.
Always up, and never trim the waste allowance to avoid buying one more box. Running out mid-job means ordering a second time, and a dye lot from a later production run will not match. One spare box is cheap insurance; a mismatched floor is not.
No — it prices material only. Installation in Florida typically runs $2 to $4 per square foot on top, depending on subfloor prep, and freight is quoted against your ZIP once the box count is known.
Add a row per rectangle and the calculator totals them. For a genuinely irregular space, take the largest rectangle that contains it and treat the overage as waste — it is cheaper to be right than to be exact.