How do I calculate how much flooring I need?

Take the room area, then add the cut waste your room actually produces rather than a flat percentage. That waste comes from the rows across the width, the rip at each edge, and the offcut at the end of each run. For a 16 by 12 room in 7 in plank it is 2.9%, so 192 square feet of floor needs about 198 ordered.

How much waste should I add for flooring?

Only one of the three manufacturer documents used on this site publishes a figure at all: Bruce says 5% for a straight lay and 10% for diagonal, and the same paragraph explains the 5% is largely the permitted grading defect rate rather than a cutting allowance. Pergo publishes none for laminate or vinyl. The ten percent everybody quotes has no source behind it.

Why do flooring cost guides disagree with each other?

Often they disagree with themselves. The guide used here prices 100 sq ft at $509 to $2,214 for materials and $150 to $2,900 for materials and installation, so the installed low sits below the materials low on every row of the table. The two columns come from different models, one with a fixed cost and one without, and they were not checked against each other.

What is the cheapest flooring per square foot?

On the table used here, natural stone at $3 to $20 has the lowest bottom end and ceramic tile at $11 to $39 the highest, which is not the ranking most people expect. Read the figure rather than the table: drawn on one axis, four of the five materials overlap across most of their range, so the numbers separate tile from the rest and do not reliably separate the rest from each other.

Does the published price include removing the old floor?

Not usually, and this source prices removal separately at $1 to $6 per square foot. It also prices underlayment at $3.40 to $5. Both are real lines on a real quote and neither is inside the per-square-foot material figures.

Is vinyl plank cheaper than laminate?

The general guide used here says vinyl is $7 to $22 and laminate $4 to $20, so laminate is cheaper at both ends. The same publisher's dedicated laminate page says $5 to $12 installed, which does not match either. The specific page is the one to trust, and this is a good illustration of why a single number from a cost guide should not decide a material.

Why does this page not give me one price?

Because it would be invented. Every dollar figure here belongs to a named publisher with a publication date, and the page shows the arithmetic that scales it onto your room. What this site contributes is the quantity, and that part is exact.

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Flooring Calculator

Quantities from manufacturer layout rules, prices quoted and dated

The most-linked flooring cost table on the internet prices 100 square feet at $509 to $2,214 for materials, and $150 to $2,900 for materials and installation. Installing the floor makes it cheaper. That is on every one of its ten rows.

Flooring takeoff

Room length

Room width

Plank width (the face, from the box)

Plank length

Priced as (the source's own row labels)

Quantities use the layout minimums from the Pergo Rigid Click instructions, which cover vinyl plank. Tile and stone are laid to a grid with a grout joint and belong on the tile calculator. The money is This Old House's published range, attributed below.

Specification summary

Generated from on . Reopen that address to reproduce these figures exactly.

Entered

Result

Published ranges for your floor, on one axis

Worked example

A 16 ft by 12 ft room in 7 in by 48 in vinyl plank.

192 square feet of floor. The 8 mm expansion gap comes off each side, leaving 143.4 in of usable width and 191.4 in of length.
21 rows, and the last one is 3.37 in. The Rigid Click document sets no minimum width for that last row, unlike the laminate and hardwood guides, so nothing forces a rip at the first row here.
The offcut is 0.63 in. Four planks cover 192 in of a 191.4 in run. This document publishes no minimum length for a starting piece either, so on its own rules that sliver passes; this page counts it as scrap and says which rule it borrowed to do so.
Cut waste comes out at 2.9%, nearly all of it the rip at one edge. No allowance is published in this document to compare it against.
Then the money, and this is where it gets awkward. The same 192 sq ft priced as vinyl is $1,344 to $4,224. Priced as ceramic tile it is $2,112 to $7,488. Priced as natural stone it is $576 to $3,840, which puts marble below vinyl at the bottom of its range.
Read the figure rather than the table. Drawn on one axis, four of the five materials overlap across most of their length. The table presents them as a ranking; the axis shows they are mostly the same bet.

The quantity is exact and it is ours. The money is a range somebody else published, and the useful thing this page does with it is show how far the ranges overlap, which a column of text cannot.

The formula

There is no cost formula, because there is no honest cost constant. There is a quantity formula and a scaling:

cost = published rate × area, order = area × (1 + cut waste)

published rate: a named publisher's per-square-foot range, with a date, not this site's number
area: length times width, the floor, before any waste
cut waste: computed from the rows, the rips and the offcuts, not a flat percentage

Note that the two lines use different areas on purpose. The published rate is an installed-floor rate and already contains whatever waste the estimator assumed, so multiplying it by the padded order quantity would count the waste twice. The order quantity is for the yard; the rate is for the floor.

The size table on the source page contradicts itself, and here is the arithmetic

Start with the two columns. This Old House's flooring cost guide prints a table of room sizes with a materials-only range and a materials-and-installation range. At 100 sq ft those read $509 to $2,214 and $150 to $2,900. The installed low is $359 below the materials low, and the same gap holds on all ten rows up to 1,000 sq ft.

The two columns were generated by different models. The installed column is a flat multiply: exactly $1.50 and $29.00 per square foot, with no fixed cost at all, which is why 1,000 sq ft comes out at precisely $1,500 and $29,000. The materials column is not. Its steps are $401 and about $1,990 per 100 sq ft with an intercept, so it behaves like a job with a call-out fee. Neither model is unreasonable; they were just never checked against each other.

The material table on the same page mixes bases too. Solid hardwood is listed at $3 to $10 per square foot. That is exactly the materials-only figure from this publisher's own hardwood page, whose installed figure is $6 to $18. Sitting beside it, vinyl at $7 to $22 and laminate at $4 to $20 read as installed numbers, and the laminate page from the same publisher gives $5 to $12 installed. Three answers, one material, one site.

So this page uses the material table and ignores the size table, and shows you why. The figure above draws each material's published range as a bar on one shared axis. Four of the five overlap heavily, which is the honest summary of what these numbers can tell you: they separate ceramic tile from everything else, and they do not reliably separate the rest.

Published flooring prices, and why the two columns cross over

Not this site's numbers. This Old House, flooring cost, Written by Stephanie Minasian-Koncewicz, published 5 June 2026 and read here on 2026-09-09.

As published by This Old House, flooring cost, per sq ft, by material
Item	Low	High	Unit
Natural stone (marble)	$3	$20	per sq ft
Ceramic tile	$11	$39	per sq ft
Solid hardwood	$3	$10	per sq ft
Vinyl	$7	$22	per sq ft
Laminate	$4	$20	per sq ft
Floor removal	$1	$6	per sq ft, adder
Underlayment	$3.40	$5	per sq ft, adder

Source: This Old House, flooring cost, published 5 June 2026, read 2026-09-09. Use this table, not the size table on the same page. That one prices 100 sq ft at 509 to 2,214 for materials only and 150 to 2,900 for materials AND installation, so its installed low is below its materials low, on every one of its ten rows. The material rows here are also not all on one basis: solid hardwood at 3 to 10 is the materials-only figure from this publisher's own hardwood page, whose installed figure is 6 to 18.

This site publishes no price of its own. Why, and what that means for these figures.

What the quantity part actually computes

Area divided by coverage plus ten percent is not a calculation, it is a shrug. What decides how much plank flooring you buy is three published minimums and where your room lands against them.

The rows across the width. The usable width, after the expansion gap comes off both sides, divided by the plank face width. The remainder is the last row. Two of the three manufacturer documents used on this site set a minimum for it, 1 in and 5 cm respectively, and both instruct you to rip the FIRST row as well when the remainder falls short, splitting it between the two edges. That is the case where a room that divides almost exactly into whole planks costs you the most.

The offcut along the length. The piece left at the end of each run. It is meant to start the next row, which is where a flat waste percentage silently assumes its savings, and whether it may depends on the minimum end-joint stagger. A row started with a short piece staggers by the plank length minus that piece, so a long offcut fails the stagger and a very short one is not a board.

The expansion gap. A constant in two of the documents and a formula in the third. Pergo's laminate guide publishes it as 1 mm per metre of floor width with an 8 mm minimum, so it is invisible under about 26 ft wide and real above it.

The hardwood and laminate pages carry the quotes and the document numbers for each of those.

Tile, stone and carpet are not this calculation

The row and offcut arithmetic describes a plank or board laid in courses. Three common floors are not that, and using a plank calculator on them gives a confidently wrong answer.

Tile and stone are laid to a grid with a grout joint, and the joint is not a rounding error: on a 1 in mosaic it is roughly ten times the share of the surface it takes on a 12 in tile. The tile calculator reproduces the manufacturer's own coverage chart from a single constant and handles the joint properly.

Carpet comes off a roll of fixed width, so the waste is decided by seam placement rather than by any percentage, and the carpet calculator works to the CRI 105 rules on where a seam may go.

Pick tile or stone in the selector above and the page will price them for you, because the source publishes those rows, but it warns you that the quantity half does not apply.

What a flooring quote should be compared on

Not the total. The total is the one number both parties can defend and neither can check.

The area they measured. If their square footage and yours disagree, everything downstream is noise. Ask whether the figure includes closets, the hearth, and the bay.

Removal of the old floor, as its own line. The source used here prices it at $1 to $6 per square foot, a six-fold range, and it moves with the number of existing layers and local disposal fees.

Underlayment and subfloor prep. Priced separately at $3.40 to $5 per square foot in the same source. Every floating floor needs an underlay, and a subfloor outside the flatness tolerance needs levelling compound before anything is laid on it. Pergo's tolerance is 4 mm over 2 m and 1 mm over 20 cm, which is tighter than most old floors.

Transitions. One per doorway on most floating installations, and mandatory once the connected surface exceeds the published maximum size. A quote for one continuous floor and a quote with four transitions are different jobs.

Frequently asked questions

How do I calculate how much flooring I need?: Take the room area, then add the cut waste your room actually produces rather than a flat percentage. That waste comes from the rows across the width, the rip at each edge, and the offcut at the end of each run. For a 16 by 12 room in 7 in plank it is 2.9%, so 192 square feet of floor needs about 198 ordered.
How much waste should I add for flooring?: Only one of the three manufacturer documents used on this site publishes a figure at all: Bruce says 5% for a straight lay and 10% for diagonal, and the same paragraph explains the 5% is largely the permitted grading defect rate rather than a cutting allowance. Pergo publishes none for laminate or vinyl. The ten percent everybody quotes has no source behind it.
Why do flooring cost guides disagree with each other?: Often they disagree with themselves. The guide used here prices 100 sq ft at $509 to $2,214 for materials and $150 to $2,900 for materials and installation, so the installed low sits below the materials low on every row of the table. The two columns come from different models, one with a fixed cost and one without, and they were not checked against each other.
What is the cheapest flooring per square foot?: On the table used here, natural stone at $3 to $20 has the lowest bottom end and ceramic tile at $11 to $39 the highest, which is not the ranking most people expect. Read the figure rather than the table: drawn on one axis, four of the five materials overlap across most of their range, so the numbers separate tile from the rest and do not reliably separate the rest from each other.
Does the published price include removing the old floor?: Not usually, and this source prices removal separately at $1 to $6 per square foot. It also prices underlayment at $3.40 to $5. Both are real lines on a real quote and neither is inside the per-square-foot material figures.
Is vinyl plank cheaper than laminate?: The general guide used here says vinyl is $7 to $22 and laminate $4 to $20, so laminate is cheaper at both ends. The same publisher's dedicated laminate page says $5 to $12 installed, which does not match either. The specific page is the one to trust, and this is a good illustration of why a single number from a cost guide should not decide a material.
Why does this page not give me one price?: Because it would be invented. Every dollar figure here belongs to a named publisher with a publication date, and the page shows the arithmetic that scales it onto your room. What this site contributes is the quantity, and that part is exact.

Check these numbers yourself

This Old House, flooring costWritten by Stephanie Minasian-Koncewicz, updated 5 June 2026, read 2026-09-09. Source of the material price ranges, the removal and underlayment figures, and the size table whose two columns cross over.
Pergo, Installation instructions VINYL PLANKS & TILES (Rigid Click)Version 11.2025, read 2026-09-09. Source of the 8 mm expansion gap, the 30 cm stagger and the maximum installation size used by the quantity half of this page.
Bruce (AHF Products), Engineered Hardwood installation instructionsDocument 210049, read 2026-09-09. Cited for the only published waste allowance found in this trade, 5% straight and 10% diagonal, and for the sentence that explains what the 5% is actually for.

How every figure here is verified: Sources & Method. Who builds this: About. Found something wrong? Tell us and it gets fixed or removed.

Figures on this page last checked against the source documents on 2026-09-09. Codes are amended locally; confirm against the edition your jurisdiction enforces.

Related calculators

No figure of money on this page is this site's own. The ranges belong to This Old House, are reproduced with their byline and date, and are scaled by area with the arithmetic shown. The page also documents where that source contradicts itself, with the arithmetic, so you can check it rather than take it. The quantity half assumes a rectangular room, one plank material, and no islands, hearths or closets, and it does not apply to tile, stone or carpet.