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Flooring

What it's for

Ordering a floor: plank by the box, tile by the piece with thinset and grout, or carpet by the square yard. You list the rooms, pick the material and the pattern, and walk away with the quantity to buy, a material list and a floor plan of the first room. It is an order quantity, not a code check.

Step by step

The example is the screen as it opens: one 10' by 10' room in hardwood, laid straight, with underlayment.

Flooring inputs at their defaults: MATERIAL Hardwood, PATTERN Straight with +0% pattern waste under it, SQ FT PER BOX 20 sq ft, INCLUDE UNDERLAYMENT on, then ROOMS with ROOM 1 and its trash button, LENGTH 10' 0", WIDTH 10' 0", ADD ROOM, and WASTE FACTOR 10%. The answer bar reads 6 boxes @ 20 sq ft, with 110 sq ft needed · 100 sq ft raw area under it. RESULTS repeats 110 sq ft needed · 100 sq ft raw area, with the BASIS & WHAT WAS ASSUMED row under it. 1 2 3 4 6
Material and pattern first, then the rooms, then waste.
  1. MATERIAL — tap to pick from Hardwood, Engineered, Laminate, Vinyl Plank, Porcelain Tile, Ceramic Tile, Natural Stone or Carpet. The inputs below change to suit. Leave it at Hardwood.
  2. PATTERN — Straight, Diagonal, Herringbone or Random Width. The line under it shows the extra waste that pattern adds on top of your own waste factor. Straight reads +0% pattern waste. Only the patterns the material can be laid in are offered: tile has no Random Width, and carpet has no pattern at all, so the menu goes away for carpet.
  3. SQ FT PER BOX and INCLUDE UNDERLAYMENT — shown for the four plank materials. SQ FT PER BOX is the coverage printed on the carton; it opens at a typical carton (20 sq ft for hardwood, 25 for engineered and laminate, 30 for vinyl plank) and the box count is figured from it, so type the one on the product you are buying. Underlayment on adds underlayment to the material list.
  4. Under ROOMS, measure the floor wall to wall for LENGTH (10' 0") and WIDTH (10' 0"). Break an L-shaped room into two rectangles and enter each as its own room. A room has to be at least 1' each way; a narrower strip is a threshold, bought by the piece.
  5. Tap Add Room for each further room. The trash can removes one.
  6. WASTE FACTOR — the extra for end cuts and culls, in steps of 5%. It opens at 10%.
  7. Read RESULTS: 6 boxes @ 20 sq ft, 110 sq ft needed, 100 sq ft raw area.
  8. Tap BASIS & WHAT WAS ASSUMED to see what the underlayment figure covers.
  9. Check the floor plan under the results.
  10. Read MATERIALS — Hardwood 6 boxes, Underlayment 110 sq ft — then save or share the job.
Flooring scrolled to the results: RESULTS reads 110 sq ft needed · 100 sq ft raw area, then the BASIS & WHAT WAS ASSUMED row and the link Check before you cut · Measure twice. The floor plan shows room 1 at 10' 0" square, laid with courses of plank dimensioned 10' 0", 6' 8" and 6' 3", beside a STAGGER PER MFR / GAP PER MFR detail. Its notes read ROOM 1 · 100 SF · 40' 0" PERIM; +10% WASTE +0% STRAIGHT = 110 SF (+10); 6 BOXES @ 20 SF = 120 SF · 24 COURSES; UNDERLAY 110 SF — NO PATTERN WASTE; PLANK 48"x5" 16" STAGGER, NOT IN TAKEOFF; END CUT 24"; LEFT: COURSE MARKS FROM THE BOTTOM WALL, over the title strip FLOOR PLAN, HARDWOOD, NOT TO SCALE. MATERIALS lists Hardwood 6 boxes and Underlayment — sold in rolls — divide by your roll's sq ft, 110 sq ft. 7 8 9 10
Results, the basis row, the floor plan and the order.

Tile

Pick one of the three tile materials and a TILE block appears: TILE WIDTH and TILE LENGTH are the face of one tile, TILE THICKNESS is how thick it is (it opens at 3/8", or 1/4" for a tile 4" or under), and GROUT JOINT is the joint you will set, from 1/16" to 3/8". The underlayment switch goes away. The headline becomes a tile count, and a line for thinset bags and grout bags is added.

Thinset is counted in 50-lb bags at the low end of the makers' coverage: 80 sq ft a bag at a 1/4" square notch, and 45 at the 1/2" notch a tile with a 15" side takes. Grout is counted by the volume of the joints, so a wider joint or a thicker tile buys more: a 1/2" tile takes a third more grout than a 3/8" one. The grout row says sanded for a joint of 1/8" and wider and unsanded below it, because sanded grout is not made for joints under 1/8".

A tile with a face under 9 sq in, such as a 1" or 2" mosaic, comes mounted on sheets, so it is bought by the square foot: the headline reads 110 sq ft mosaic rather than thousands of loose pieces.

On a straight floor the tile count is never fewer than the tiles the drawing lays. The grid is centred, so every cut piece at a wall is more than half a tile and takes a whole tile of its own. A 10' 6" × 8' room in 12" × 24" tile lays 6x8 CENTRED, so it buys 48 tiles even though its area plus 10% comes to 47.

Random width plank

Pick a plank material and the Random Width pattern and a WIDTH MIX block appears below the rooms. Each WIDTH ENTRY has a plank WIDTH and a MIX SHARE, the percentage of the floor laid in that width. Add Width adds another. The line Mix total under the block shows what the shares add up to. The results then list each width with its square feet, lineal feet and boxes. Each width comes in its own cartons, so the box count in the headline and the material list is the sum of those rows: 2 + 3 + 3 boxes buys 8.

Carpet

Carpet has no tile or underlayment inputs. The headline is in square yards, what you buy; the square feet under it read area + waste, not the yardage, and the cut sheet labels that row the same. The material list adds carpet pad and tack strip. The tack strip is the full perimeter of each room, doorways not taken out.

Carpet is bought the way it comes off a 12 ft roll, not by floor area. Every piece in a room has its pile the same way, so a room wider than the roll takes a second full-length drop, not a strip turned sideways. Each drop is cut 3" long at each wall for trimming, and the room's width gets the same 3" at each wall (CRI 105, section 5.3). The app runs the drops whichever way across the room takes less carpet. So a 15' 6" × 13' room takes two drops of 13' 6": 324 sq ft, or 36 sq yd, where the floor area alone says 25. A results line for each room gives its drops and their length, and the drawing reads ROLL 324 SF / 9 = 36 SQ YD. When the floor area plus your waste factor comes to more than the roll, that is what you buy instead. The pad has no pile direction, so it is always the floor area plus waste.

Reading the results

The headline is what you buy: boxes for plank, with the carton they are counted in (6 boxes @ 20 sq ft), tiles for tile, sq yd for carpet. It also shows in a strip under the title whenever the results card is scrolled off screen.

Needed and raw area. Raw area is the rooms as measured. Needed is raw area plus your waste factor plus the pattern's waste. The drawing shows the sum: +10% WASTE +0% STRAIGHT = 110 SF, then 6 BOXES @ 20 SF = 120 SF. The box size there is your SQ FT PER BOX. Box sizes vary by product, so check it against the carton you are buying.

The width mix check appears only for random width plank. Green reads Width mix totals 100 %. WIDTH MIX TOTALS 90 % — ADJUST TO 100 %, with your own total in it, means the shares do not add up, so the per-width rows will not add up to the material needed either. The calculator does not rescale them for you. Fix it by changing a MIX SHARE until the mix total reads 100%.

BASIS & WHAT WAS ASSUMED opens one line when you are buying thinset or underlayment. It says those cover the floor area plus your waste factor, and that the pattern allowance is cut waste, so it is added to the tile or plank count only. The drawing says the same: UNDERLAY 110 SF — NO PATTERN WASTE. Underlayment comes in rolls whose coverage varies by product, so divide the square feet by your roll's. For tile, a second line says where the tile, thinset and grout figures come from. The last line names what the takeoff leaves to you: transitions and thresholds, base and shoe, and vapor barrier.

The drawing is a plan of one room with the flooring laid on it (the one PLAN SHOWS picks once there are two rooms or more; room 1 otherwise; the cut sheet gives every other room a plan page), and a detail reading STAGGER PER MFR and GAP PER MFR — the stagger and the expansion gap are the manufacturer's call, not the calculator's. The plank shown is there to draw the layout; the note says it is NOT IN TAKEOFF. On a straight floor the dimensions up the left side are course marks hooked on the bottom wall, with the room width outermost, and the note LEFT: COURSE MARKS FROM THE BOTTOM WALL says so. Pinch to zoom, or tap the expand button at the top right to open it full screen. See Reading the drawing.

SHARE PDF sends a sheet with the drawing, your inputs and the material list. The list icon at the right end of the same button sends the material list alone. SAVE puts the job in History. SHARE PDF and the list icon in it stay dim until you change at least one input. SAVE stays lit, but while every input is still a default a tap only answers Enter your job's numbers first and saves nothing.

Flooring is a Pro calculator, and sharing a PDF and saving to History are part of Pro too. This help is free. See Free and Pro.

Common mistakes