There is no need to keep scratching your head and thinking how much laminate flooring do I need for my room.
If you follow this guide, you will know EXACTLY how much laminate flooring you will need.
Grab a tape measure, a pen, a notepad, a calculator and lets get measuring!
All About The Squares
Not many rooms are free from any obstructions and awkward gaps, like for a instance a living room.
Most living rooms have a chimney breast and maybe some space under the stairs.
Now I’m not calling you out, but some of you will just measure the longest length of the room and also the longest width of the room avoiding any obstruction.
Doing it that way will undoubtedly cause you to buy way too much laminate flooring.
Instead divide the room into squares/rectangles, as shown in this floor plan…
As you can see in the floor plan, whenever there is an obstruction (chimney breast) you turn the space next to obstruction into a squared area to be measured.
You also do the same for the centre of the room, and other spaces next to an obstruction.
Adding It All Up
Hopefully you’ve mapped out your room, turned it into squares and measured out each square, just like this…
We now need to find the total square metres for each square.
We do this by multiplying the LENGTH by the WIDTH.
Using the measurements from my living room and the above formula, the results are:
Red square 1.53 x 0.33 = 0.5049
Blue square 2.18 x 0.37 = 0.8066
Yellow square 5.12 x 2.36 = 12.0832
Green square 3.45 x 0.88 = 3.036
You now take those totals and add them together to give you the total amount of flooring you will need.
0.5049 + 0.8066 + 12.0832 + 3.036 = 16.4307
Now to make things easier round the total up to the nearest whole number, which will be 17.
So, 17 square metres of flooring will be required for my living room.
But Wait! You Need To Add 10%
You also need to add 10% to your total square metres as a contingency (backup) just incase you damage some of your flooring or you make a bad cut.
So adding 10% to the 17 square metres means that I need a total 18.7 m2
And again, to make life easy round the total upto the nearest whole number.
The new total amount of flooring I will need is 19m2
What About If I Want It In Square Feet?
The same formula applies, just measure your squares in feet not metres and the same applies if you need the measurement in inches, centimetres etc
Length x Width = Total Footage
I have A Bay Window, What Now?
Because bay windows have no straight sides, just treat the area as you would measure a square.
Measure across the bay window (wall to wall) and then from the centre of this line to the centre of the bay window, just like this…
Did This Post Help?
Hopefully there is no need to keep asking yourself how much laminate flooring do I need for my room anymore.
Put this method to work and know exactly how much flooring you will need.
But if your still stuck, or have the most unusually shaped room and not sure how to measure it, let me know in the comments section below, and let’s see if we can get it sorted for you.
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