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Renovation material planner

Know exactly how much material to buy.

Every other calculator multiplies length by width and adds ten percent. These ones draw your room to scale, lay the pattern you actually chose, mark every piece that has to be cut, and turn that into boxes, gallons and sheets you can take to the counter.

Start with flooring See all 12 calculators
  • Waste measured from your layout, not a flat percentage
  • A printable scale plan with every cut marked
  • No sign-up, no account, nothing leaves your browser

The calculators

Twelve tools covering the jobs homeowners actually take on. Each one gives quantities, cost and a plan.

Flooring

Flooring Calculator Square footage, boxes and cost for any floor covering, with a scale plan of the layout. Vinyl Plank (LVP) Calculator LVP boxes with real stagger waste, first and last row cuts, and a printable plan. Laminate Flooring Calculator Boxes of laminate including expansion gap allowance and stagger waste. Hardwood Floor Calculator Bundles of solid or engineered hardwood, with waste by install direction.

Tile

Tile Calculator Tile count, boxes, grout and thinset, with a scale plan showing every cut. Backsplash Calculator Counter runs, outlets and range gaps measured the way a kitchen really is. Herringbone Tile Calculator The 45-degree pattern drawn to scale, with perimeter cuts and true waste. Subway Tile Calculator Half, third or stacked offsets for a wall or backsplash, with grout and cuts.

Paint

Paint Calculator Gallons for walls, ceiling and trim with coats, primer and openings handled. Exterior Paint Calculator Siding area by texture, plus gables, trim and primer for bare surfaces.

Walls and trim

Drywall Calculator Sheets for walls and ceiling with screws, compound and tape, drawn to scale. Baseboard Calculator Perimeter minus doorways, mitre waste and rounding to real stock lengths.

How it works

  1. Measure the room. Two readings in each direction, at floor level, and use the larger one. Walls are never parallel.
  2. Pick the material and the pattern. A grid and a herringbone in the same room differ by seven points of waste — several boxes on a normal floor.
  3. Read the plan. Full pieces in grey, cut pieces in amber. If the cuts at the walls look wrong, shift the layout before you buy anything.
  4. Take the numbers to the store. Boxes, bags, gallons and sheets, rounded the way they are actually sold.

Guides worth reading first

Flooring Waste Factor: How Much Extra to Buy The percentage to add for each material, room shape and layout — and when to add more. Tile Waste Factor by Pattern: 10% to 20% Grid, brick, diagonal, herringbone and chevron each waste a different amount. How to Stagger Vinyl Plank Flooring Minimum offsets, H-joints, planning row one and getting the last row right. How Much Paint for 1,000 Square Feet? Three gallons per coat, and the four things that change that number.

Why the plan matters

The reason estimates come in short is almost never the arithmetic. It is that the arithmetic ignores the layout. Length times width plus ten percent is correct for a room that divides evenly into whole pieces, and no room does.

A 12 foot wall takes three 48 inch planks exactly. A 12 foot 3 inch wall takes three planks and a 3 inch offcut, and the rest of that fourth plank is waste unless it is long enough to start the next row. Multiply that across forty rows and the difference between the two rooms is two boxes.

So these calculators place the pieces. They know the minimum stagger offset, they know a herringbone only closes on a 2:1 piece, and they know a cut tile's offcut is only useful if a cut that size is needed somewhere else. Then they show you the higher of the measured waste and the industry table, because being a box over is inconvenient and being a box short stops the job.