How to Measure a Room Size
Square feet, cubic feet, linear feet: learning the terms will make reading decorating instructions much clearer. If you do not know the difference between these terms, you could make serious mistakes in purchasing supplies, costing you hundreds of extra dollars, or leaving you short of supplies in the middle of your project. Measuring your room consists of getting a few numbers and then using those numbers in different combinations. Does this Spark an idea?
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Instructions
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Stretch the tape measure from one side of the floor to the opposite side. Make sure you go all the way the the wall and not stop early at a radiator or baseboard. Do the same thing for the other wall, staying perpendicular to the first measure. Write these two numbers down and then multiply them. Round up your answer to the nearest whole number and use this answer as the square footage of the room.
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Hold the tape so that it touches the ceiling and drops straight to the floor. Take this number to be the height of the room. Multiply the height by the square footage of the room to get the cubic area of the room. Use this number to figure the heating/cooling area of your home such as when deciding the size of a heater or air conditioner.
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Find the linear measurement of a room such as a hallway by starting at a point at one end of the room and going straight to the opposite side. Round the number up to get the linear footage of the area.
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Finding the square footage of a wall with windows is a little different than the straight forward measurement of a flat area like a floor. Start by measuring the height of the wall and multiplying it by the width of the wall. This is the square footage of a wall with no windows. Measure each window from the exact point where it touches the wall to the other side and then another measurement from the top to the bottom. Write down both numbers and multiply them together. Subtract the answer from the square footage of the wall. Do this for each window and/or door on the wall to get the total square footage of the wall. Use this number for calculating the amount of paint coverage or wallpaper needed.
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Divide large rooms with different sized areas into smaller squared sections. Treat each section individually and then add the totals from each section together to get the whole area of the large room. Try sketching the room on a piece of paper while taking the measurements to keep the areas differentiated.
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Tips & Warnings
Estimate the area of cathedral ceilings by measuring from the highest point of the ceiling to the lowest part of the ceiling, multiplying the numbers together and multiplying the answer by the square footage of the room. Visualize the ceiling area as being a box, and then subtract the percentage of the ceiling that is peaked from the box. Add this estimated measurement to your room cubic area total.
Use feet and decimals in your calculations or it can get too confusing, so that 6 feet and 3 inches is written as 6.25 feet.
References
Resources
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