How To Calculate The Square Footage Of A Room

As you prepare to purchase flooring for your home or business, knowing how to calculate square footage of a room is key. You then can order the proper amount of flooring from Greatmats to use in your project. You won’t end up buying too much and wasting money or buying too little and causing issues with finishing your project.

Calculating square footage of a room for flooring installations is not difficult. To determine the total amount to order, it just takes a few measurements and tools.

Tools Required for Figuring Out Square Feet Measurement of a Room

You will want to have a few items on hand to help you take the proper measurements of the room.

• Measuring tape
  
• Pencil
  
• Paper
  
• Calculator

For a large room, having two people available to help with the tape measure is helpful in creating an accurate measurement. If you are by yourself, try hooking the edge of the tape measure under a heavy item to hold it while you extend the tape measure to the other end of the room. You may want to check each measurement twice to ensure accuracy, especially if you are working by yourself.

Start With Taking the Base Measurements

If you have a square or rectangular shaped room, you really only need two measurements – length and width. Extend the tape measure across the longest stretch of the room from one wall to the opposite wall and write down the length. Then take the same wall to wall measurement on the shorter stretch of the room for the width.

Multiply the length by the width to create the square foot measurement for the room. If the length is 14 feet and the width is 10 feet, you have a calculation of 140 square feet, for example.

We would suggest rounding to the next half foot or full foot with your measurements, ensuring that you don’t end up short on your tile order. If your measurement is 14 feet, 4 inches for the room’s length, round up to 14.5 feet or 15 feet when calculating the square footage of the room.

Dealing With a Closet When Calculating Square Footage

If you are measuring a room that has an odd shape or that includes a closet, divide the room into two or more segments consisting of squares and rectangles. Take length and width measurements for each segment of the room separately and then calculate the square footage for each one. Add those square footages together to determine the full amount of coverage that you need.


For example, if the main section of the bedroom is 10 by 14 feet, measure the closet separately. Perhaps it’s 3 by 7 feet, resulting in a calculation of 21 square feet. Add 140 and 21 to yield a measurement of 161 square feet for the entire room.

Determining How Many Tiles You Need

With the square footage measurement in hand, you now can determine how many tiles or mats to order. (Our expert customer service team can help you as well.)


If you are ordering tiles that are 12 by 12 inches, or 1 square foot in size, just order the same number of tiles as your square footage measurement. For a 140-square-foot calculation, you would need 140 of these tiles.

If you want to order 2-by-2-foot tiles, each tile measures 4 square feet. You’d then divide 140 by 4 to determine how many tiles to order, which would be 35.

Within the specifications list on most of our product pages, you will see a square foot (SF) per item listing. This is a helpful number, especially for tiles with puzzle edges that may have some square footage loss because of the interlocking pattern. Divide your room’s square footage calculation by the SF per item number to figure out how many tiles to order. If you end up with a fraction, such as 37.3 tiles, round up to the next full tile (38 tiles).

Let Greatmats Help You Find Out How to Calculate Square Footage of a Room

At Greatmats, we often recommend that customers add 5% overage to the square foot measurement that they made for their room. This overage is helpful if you must cut some flooring to fit tight to the wall in your installation. In our 140-square-foot calculation from earlier, a 5% overage would add 7 square feet to the order.


Additionally, we offer online Quick Flooring Calculators for many of our products that help you with how to calculate square footage of tiles you need in a living room or another room. Just enter the length and width of the room in feet on the product page, and our calculator will tell you how many tiles to order. You also can check a box that automatically calculates the 5% overage.

Otherwise, reach out to the Greatmats customer service team for additional help. Perhaps you want a little extra overage as part of your order, or maybe you want to mix and match colors to fit your space, so you need to order a certain number of each color of tile. Our experts are ready to help you with finding the number of tiles you need for any of our products.