Flooring Box & Waste Calculator

This flooring calculator helps you buy the right number of boxes for laminate, luxury vinyl plank, SPC, or engineered wood without running short. Enter one or more rooms in meters or feet, your plank length and width, the box coverage printed on the carton, and the laying pattern. The tool outputs total floor area, suggested waste, boxes to purchase, estimated underlayment rolls, planks per row in the first room, and a simple starter cut plan so your first and last boards look balanced at the walls. It is tuned for 99% of home layouts and keeps results easy to mark out on site.

Waste varies by pattern and room complexity. Straight or staggered installs usually need about five to eight percent. Diagonal layouts add more offcuts, and herringbone or chevron requires generous allowances to maintain pattern points, especially in small spaces and hallways. The calculator sets a smart baseline and lets you add extra waste for tricky doorways, alcoves, or flooring transitions. If you are joining several rooms, add each room so the total cut loss is realistic instead of assuming one big rectangle.

For a cleaner look, avoid skinny slivers along the long wall. The planks-per-row and starter cut plan show how to split the remainder evenly so both edges keep at least one-third of a plank. Remember to leave expansion gaps per the manufacturer and use spacers along the perimeter. Underlayment matters: foam or cork rolls improve comfort, reduce sound, and can smooth minor subfloor variation. Enter the roll coverage to estimate how many rolls to pick up with your boxes so delivery and labor line up on the same day.

The calculator sums the area of all rooms. It applies a baseline waste based on pattern: about seven percent for straight or staggered, around ten percent for diagonal, and roughly twelve percent for herringbone or chevron. If you enter more than three rooms, a small complexity bump is added automatically. Any optional extra waste you set is added on top to cover site quirks. Boxes are simply the purchase area divided by the box coverage and rounded up.

Planks per row are estimated from the first room’s width divided by the plank width. The remainder is split on both sides to balance the layout; if either edge falls below one-third of a plank, the plan recommends trimming the starter course so both sides finish at healthy widths. If you provide planks per box, the tool also estimates total planks and likely leftovers, which is helpful for stair nosings and closet floors.