Flooring Calculator

Enter the room size and your product’s per-box coverage to see how many boxes of laminate, vinyl plank or hardwood to buy.

One calculator for plank flooring

Laminate, vinyl plank and hardwood all sell the same way — by the box, with the coverage printed on it — so one calculator covers all three. Enter the room, the per-box coverage from your chosen product, and the layout, and it returns whole boxes with the right waste built in: 10% for a straight lay, 15% for diagonal or herringbone, where every row starts and ends with an angled cut.

How to use it

  1. Measure the room; for L-shapes, add the rectangles.
  2. Read the coverage per box off the product listing (about 20 sq ft is typical).
  3. Pick the layout — the waste difference is real money on big rooms.

The formula

boxes = area × (1 + waste) ÷ coverage per box, rounded up

A worked example

A 16 × 12 ft room is 192 sq ft; straight-laid with 10% waste that is 211 sq ft — 11 boxes at 20 sq ft each. The same room laid diagonally needs 221 sq ft — still 12 boxes here, but on larger floors the diagonal premium regularly adds whole boxes.

Common questions

Should I keep the spare pieces?
Yes — keep at least a box’s worth. Plank floors are repaired by swapping boards, and matching a discontinued product years later is somewhere between hard and impossible.
Does the room need to be empty and square?
Empty helps; square doesn’t matter — out-of-square rooms just consume the waste allowance faster, which is what it’s for.
What about underlayment?
Sold separately by the roll unless your planks have it pre-attached — same area as the room, no waste multiplier needed.