How to Calculate Area in Square Feet

Calculating area will give you a good estimate of how large a space you are dealing with. To calculate area, you must multiply a certain amount times another amount in the same unit. This action squares the unit. As long as your units are the same (feet, yards, inches), it will be squared. As such, the key part of calculating area in square feet is converting your units into feet.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Pencil Paper Calculator

The Steps

1. Consider the size of your space. This will dictate the formula you will need to determine the area. For example, to find the area of rectangle and square spaces, you will need to multiply the length of the space times the width of the space (A = lw). For a triangular space, you will need to multiply the base and height measurements together and then divide them in half (A = 1/2bh). See the Resources below for a complete listing of area formulas.

2. Convert your size measurements into feet. If it is inches, divide it by 12. If it's in yards, multiply it by 3. If the measurement is in meters, multiply the amount by 3.28 to get the number of feet.

3. Make sure all the measurements you need are in feet. Otherwise, the calculations will not work.

4. Plug the converted measurements you calculated in Step 2 into the formula from Step 1.

5. Follow the formula to get your measurement in square feet.

References

• Square Units and Area: Science at NCSU.edu

Resources

• Area Formulas at Math.com