Before you shop
Ten minutes and a tape measure turns "what does flooring cost?" into a real number. Here's how to do it properly, including the part most people get wrong — how much extra to order.
A laser measure is quicker if you have one, but a tape is perfectly accurate and nobody has ever needed more than that.
Draw the room roughly to shape — it doesn't need to be neat or to scale. Then divide anything that isn't a plain rectangle into rectangles: an L-shaped room is two, a room with a bay window is the main box plus the bay.
Measure and label each rectangle separately. You'll multiply and add them at the end. This is far more reliable than trying to handle an odd shape in one go.
Measure the full length and width of each rectangle, wall to wall, at the widest point of the room. Measure down at floor level, not at waist height — walls are rarely as straight as they look, and the floor is what you're covering.
Round every measurement up to the next inch. Never round down.
Stairs are measured separately. Count the treads (the steps) and risers (the vertical faces), and measure the width of one tread. Stairs are priced per step, not by square footage, so a count is what we need.
For each rectangle, multiply length by width in feet, then add the rectangles together. Convert inches to a decimal first — 6 inches is 0.5 feet, 3 inches is 0.25, 9 inches is 0.75.
| Main area: 14.5 ft × 18 ft | 261 sq ft |
| Bump-out: 6 ft × 8.5 ft | 51 sq ft |
| Closet: 2.5 ft × 5 ft | 12.5 sq ft |
| Room total | 324.5 sq ft |
Carpet is often quoted per square yard. Divide square feet by 9 — 324.5 ÷ 9 = about 36 square yards.
You cannot order exactly your square footage. Material gets cut to fit walls, matched for pattern, and trimmed at doorways, and you want a few spare planks in the basement for the day something gets damaged. Ordering short means a second order, a possible dye-lot mismatch, and a delay.
| Installation | Add |
|---|---|
| Standard straight lay, simple rectangular room | 10% |
| Rooms with lots of corners, closets, or angles | 15% |
| Diagonal layouts, herringbone, chevron | 15 – 20% |
| Patterned carpet or tile needing a match | 15 – 20% |
So the 324.5 sq ft room above becomes roughly 357 sq ft at 10%, or about 373 at 15%.
Carpet works differently. Broadloom comes off a roll in fixed widths — usually 12 feet, sometimes 15. A room wider than the roll needs a seam, and where that seam falls affects both the look and the amount you need. Bring us the room dimensions and we'll work out the best layout.
Two rooms with identical square footage can price very differently. What we'd want to know:
Photographs of each room, plus one of the sketch, cover most of this without you having to write it down.
Your numbers give us a real budget to work from and let you compare materials honestly instead of guessing. What they don't do is replace a professional measure.
Before anything is ordered and cut, we measure the job ourselves — that measurement is the one we stand behind. Yours is for planning; ours is for ordering. It's a normal part of the process and there's no cost to you for it.
We'll pull samples that fit the room and the budget, and get a professional measure on the calendar. 1140 Springfield Street, Feeding Hills — Monday to Friday 9 to 4, Saturday 9 to 1.