Measure a room's floor area before buying flooring
Flooring is sold by the square metre — here is how to measure an L-shaped room and add the right waste margin.
Tools used in this guide
The job
You need the floor's area in square metres before you can price flooring. Rectangular rooms are trivial; real rooms have alcoves and L-shapes that need splitting.
Split, measure, add
Sketch the room and split it into rectangles. Measure each rectangle's length and width, and run each through the area calculator (choose the rectangle shape). Add the results together.
- For an L-shaped room, two rectangles cover it — make the split where the wall jogs.
- Round each measurement to the centimetre; tape measures lie below that.
Add waste, then buy
Multiply the total by 1.05–1.10 for cutting waste (more for diagonal layouts). Buy packs to cover the result — leftover pieces are cheaper than a second delivery.