How to Calculate Area of Floor

Series Summary

Carpet and other flooring materials are very expensive to begin with. The last thing you want is a bunch left over, worthless excess taunting you for guessing how much you needed rather than calculating how much you will actually use. Sure, math can seem daunting, but sometimes it is the only way to get the job done. Construction experts use the same formulas over and over again, and if the measurements were done properly, the calculations come out right every time. So don't waste any more cash on extra flooring or siding. Find out exactly how much you need the Expert Village way.

In this free series of construction math videos, you will learn how to calculate how much material you need for your next building project. Our veteran construction expert and popular Expert Village filmmaker demonstrates the simple math formulas used to determine the area of floors and walls, as well as the volume on an entire room. You will learn how to calculate square inches and yards, plus cubic inches and yards, and even board feet. What exactly does all this math do for you? For one thing, it allows you to find out the exact area when you buying flooring or siding or even roofing. So you only pay for what you need.

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Jon on behalf of Expert Village. In this video clip we'll be figuring out the areas of a floor or a ceiling. On this kitchen floor there will be new vinyl flooring installed and we need to calculate the total square footage so that we can order th correct amount of materials. First I'm going to draw a basic diagram of the kitchen and what I'm looking for is a width and length measurement. Now the width of the kitchen is almost 7 feet and the length of the kitchen is about 9 1/2 feet. You're going to go ahead and plug in my values 9 1/2 feet X 7 feet, when I calculate those together I get a total floor square footage of 66 1/2 feet. Now the measurement is the same for the ceiling also perhaps if you wanted to paint the ceiling and needed to know how much square footage for paint coverage. "