Square Footage Calculator

Break awkward rooms into rectangles

Almost any floor plan reduces to rectangles added or subtracted. An L-shaped room is one large rectangle minus the missing corner; a room with a bay window is a rectangle plus a smaller one. Measure each piece separately and combine — far more reliable than trying to find a single clever formula. The L-shape mode here does exactly that subtraction.

Always order more than the measured area

Flooring, tile and turf all need a waste allowance for cuts, breakage and pattern matching. Ten percent is the usual starting point for a simple rectangular room with a plain material; a diagonal layout, a patterned tile or a room full of angles can push it to fifteen or twenty. Running out mid-job risks a dye-lot mismatch on the replacement batch, which is far worse than having a spare box.

Square meters are not square feet scaled by 3.28

A common error: one meter is 3.281 feet, so one square meter is 3.281 squared — 10.764 square feet, not 3.281. Area conversions square the linear factor, which is why a room that sounds modest in square meters is a large number in square feet. The conversions above apply the correct squared factors.

Measured area is not always the billable area

Trades quote in different ways. Flooring is usually priced on finished floor area with waste included; painting is priced on wall area, which needs wall height rather than floor size; landscaping may be priced by the square yard. Real-estate listings use yet another convention — gross living area, measured to exterior walls, which is larger than the floor you can actually walk on. When comparing a quote against the figure here, check which area the quote refers to before assuming either is wrong.

Frequently Asked Questions