Flooring calculator: how many boxes to buy?
Free flooring calculator: square footage, then whole boxes from your label. No sign-up.
SQUARE FOOTAGE
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Type a room's length and width and its square footage shows up here.
We don't pick the extra for you. Each row adds a percentage to the area, rounds up to whole boxes and shows what's above the floor area. Pick the row you or your installer chose, or type your own.
Tap a row to see the boxes, the spare and your cost for it.
Not counted here: underlayment, baseboard, trim and transitions, grout and adhesive, stairs.
Worked out from your measurements and your label. Rooms are rarely square, so check with your supplier or installer before you buy.
Turn on JavaScript and this works out your square footage and boxes as you type. The formula is below if you'd rather do it by hand.
Clear everything you typed, the example room included?
Bookmark this page for the next room. Your numbers aren't saved.
We don't send or store what you type. It stays on this page until you leave.
How the flooring calculator works
Type each room the way your tape reads it. Feet and inches, a plain 14.5, metres, centimetres: the calculator reads every length back beside its label before it multiplies anything. That readback is where a kitchen island typed in metres instead of feet gets caught, and caught here is cheaper than caught at the till.
Each area is its length times its width. Whatever the floor stops at, a kitchen island, a hearth, a tub, comes off at the size you measured. If something you took out can't fit inside its area, we won't total that area. An L-shaped room is two rectangles that don't overlap. Lengths convert through the exact definitions in Canada's Weights and Measures Act, where an inch is exactly 2.54 cm. Every area shows in square feet, with square metres beside it.
Then the carton does the rest, whether it holds laminate, vinyl plank or tile. Type the coverage it prints: TORLYS's sell sheet for its UltraWood Elite vinyl plank says "23.53 SF per box". Or type the piece size and how many come in a box. The calculator adds each allowance to your square footage, divides by what one box covers, and rounds up to whole boxes once, at the very end.
That last step hides a surprise. Whole boxes buy you extra material, sometimes more than the percentage you meant to add. That is material above the floor area, and cuts can use it up. A 12 by 11 foot 8 inch bedroom is 140 square feet. With that 23.53 square foot box and 5% added, you need 6.25 boxes' worth, so you buy 7. Of your 24.71 spare square feet, 17.71 come from the rounding, not the 5%.
We don't pick your allowance, and we hold no coverage figure or price of our own. If an installer's quote says 13 boxes, type it in and you'll see exactly how much floor that covers.
Who this is for
- Homeowners about to lay laminate, vinyl plank, engineered hardwood or tile, with a tape-measure reading on a scrap of paper and a carton label in front of them.
- Anyone holding an installer's quote that says "13 boxes" and wondering how much spare that is.
- Anyone tiling a backsplash or a shower wall: a wall goes in as width by height, the same way a floor does.
Homeowner questions about flooring and tile
How many boxes of flooring do I need for a 12x12 room?
Seven, going by the one carton label we can quote. A 12 by 12 foot room is 144 square feet. TORLYS prints 23.53 square feet per box for UltraWood Elite, so the room is 6.12 boxes' worth and you buy 7, which leaves about 21 square feet spare. Add 5 or 10% and it's still 7. Add 15% and it becomes 8. Your own carton decides it, so type its figure in.
How much extra flooring should I buy?
Whatever your installer or the product's instructions call for, and we'd read the instructions first. TORLYS's instructions for its UltraWood Premier and Elite planks say to "add 5% of material to allow for custom cutting." Planks you want to set aside for a future repair come on top of that. The allowance rows in the calculator show what each choice buys once the boxes are whole. That's often more spare than the percentage itself.
How many square feet are in a box of flooring?
Whatever the carton or the store's product page says, and it changes from one product to the next. TORLYS's sheet for UltraWood Elite, for one, says 23.53 square feet per box, which is 2.186 m². If your label gives square metres, pick m² beside the coverage and type the figure as printed. If all you know is the plank or tile size, switch to piece size and type how many come in a box.
How many square feet is a 12x24 tile?
Two. A 12 by 24 inch tile is 288 square inches, and a square foot is 144. If a box holds 8, it covers 16 square feet. Tile and plank sizes are nominal, though, so when the box prints its own coverage, use that. TORLYS's vinyl plank sheet shows why: its 8-1/4 by 58-13/16 inch size and its 209 by 1494 mm size aren't quite the same plank.
How do I measure an L-shaped room for flooring?
Split it into two rectangles that don't overlap and enter each one as its own area. A 14 by 12 foot living room with a 6 by 4 foot nook off one side is 168 plus 24, or 192 square feet. Measure it as one 20 by 12 box and you'd claim 240. Measure each part wall to wall, at floor level.
Do you put flooring under a kitchen island?
That depends on the floor and on the installer, so check the product's instructions. For the count, it's simple. If the floor stops at the island's base, add the island as a part that won't be covered. If the floor runs underneath, leave it in.
Does square footage include closets?
For buying flooring, a closet counts if the floor goes into it. Measure it as its own area, wall to wall, and it joins the total before anything is rounded. Don't trust a room size off a listing over your own tape.
How many square feet are in a square metre?
About 10.76. Canada's Weights and Measures Act makes a foot exactly 0.3048 metres, so a square foot is exactly 0.09290304 m² and a square metre is 10.7639 square feet. The calculator converts from those exact figures and shows both units on every area.
Should you keep extra flooring?
We'd keep what's left after the job, unopened boxes aside. A plank from the same delivery is the easiest match for a repair. TORLYS's UltraWood instructions ask for the floor to go down "from several cartons at the same time, shuffling planks to ensure colour and shade mix", which tells you the shade isn't identical from one box to the next.
How much flooring do I need?
Square footage, then an allowance, then whole boxes. Measure every area the floor will cover, length times width, and take out what it won't. Add the areas up. Add the allowance you've settled on. Divide by the coverage printed on the box and round up once, at the end.
Round room by room instead and you can buy more than you need. Take a 14' 6" by 12' 3" living room less a 5 by 2 foot hearth, plus a 1.1 by 3.6 m hallway, in boxes of 22.09 square feet with 10% added. Add the two first and it's 11 boxes. Round each one on its own and it's 12. Ours adds everything before it rounds anything. It shows square feet and square metres side by side, and the flooring list it prints carries the label figures you used and the date you worked it out.
Sources and last checked
Checked October 8, 2026. Data version flooring-ca-2026-10-07.
- Unit definitions: Weights and Measures Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. W-6, Schedules I and II (Justice Laws website, current to 2026-09-21).
- Carton figure and plank sizes quoted above: TORLYS, UltraWood Elite sell sheet (03.2025).
- The 5% line and the shuffle-the-cartons line: TORLYS, UltraWood Premier & Elite Installation Instructions (revised July 15, 2025).
How we made it: the calculator is arithmetic over the numbers you type. It holds no coverage figures, allowances or prices of its own. We quote TORLYS for what it publishes, not as an endorsement.
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