How to Measure Your Floor (and How Much to Order)

One of the most common questions we hear in our Gepps Cross showroom is, "How much flooring do I actually need?" It's a great question, because ordering too little means an awkward second delivery (often from a different batch), while ordering too much wastes money. The good news is that measuring your own floor is straightforward once you know the steps. This guide walks you through it in plain English, with the maths spelled out, so you can shop with confidence, whether you're looking at hybrid, laminate or timber flooring.

Tools you'll need

You don't need anything fancy. Grab the following before you start:

• A tape measure (a 5 m or 8 m metal tape is ideal) or a laser measure for larger rooms
• A pen and notepad, or your phone's notes app
• A simple sketch of each room (rough is fine, it just needs the shape)
• A calculator (your phone is perfect)

Work in metres and centimetres throughout, and write everything down as you go. It's much easier than trying to remember six different numbers.

Measuring a rectangular room

Most rooms are rectangles or close enough to it. To find the floor area:

1. Measure the length of the room, wall to wall, in metres.
2. Measure the width the same way.
3. Multiply the two: area = length × width.

For example, a bedroom that is 4.2 m long and 3.5 m wide is 4.2 × 3.5 = 14.7 m². That's your floor area. Tip: measure at floor level, not at skirting-board height, and take your width measurement in the widest part of the room if the walls aren't perfectly straight.

L-shaped and irregular rooms

Don't be put off by an unusual shape. The trick is to split the room into rectangles, measure each one, then add the areas together.

1. Sketch the room and draw lines to divide it into two or three neat rectangles.
2. Measure the length and width of each rectangle.
3. Calculate the area of each rectangle (length × width).
4. Add all the areas together for the total floor area.

For an L-shaped open-plan living area, you might have one rectangle of 5 m × 4 m (20 m²) and a second of 3 m × 2.5 m (7.5 m²), giving a total of 27.5 m². The same method works for bay windows, alcoves and any odd corner: break it down, measure, add up.

Doorways, hallways and thresholds

It's easy to forget the small spaces, but they add up. A few pointers:

• Doorways: add the small area where the flooring runs into the doorway opening, usually about 0.1–0.2 m² per door. It's minor, but it's where trims and thresholds sit.
• Hallways: treat a hallway as its own long, narrow rectangle (length × width) and add it to your total.
• Joining rooms: if the same floor flows from one room into the next, measure the whole connected area together so the boards can run continuously.

Don't forget the finishing pieces either. Door bars, scotia and stair nosings live in our accessories range, along with underlay.

Stairs (a rough method)

Stairs are trickier and we'd always recommend a professional measure for these, but here's a rough way to estimate. For each step you need to cover the tread (the part you walk on) and the riser (the vertical face).

1. Measure the depth of the tread and the height of the riser, then add them together (a typical step is roughly 0.25 m tread + 0.20 m riser = 0.45 m).
2. Multiply by the width of the staircase (say 0.9 m): 0.45 × 0.9 = about 0.4 m² per step.
3. Multiply by the number of steps. For 13 steps that's roughly 5.3 m².

Stairs use more cuts and offcuts, so add extra wastage here, and please let our team confirm the figures.

Why you add wastage

Your floor area is not the same as the amount you should order. Every installation produces offcuts where boards are trimmed to fit walls, doorways and corners, and you also want a few spare boards in case a plank is ever damaged later. That's why we add wastage:

• Standard straight-lay rooms: add around 7–10%.
• Diagonal layouts, herringbone or busy patterns: add more, often 15% or higher, because angled cuts create more offcuts.
• Lots of small rooms, nooks or stairs: lean towards the higher end of the range.

To add 10% wastage, simply multiply your floor area by 1.1. So 27.5 m² becomes 27.5 × 1.1 = 30.25 m² required.

Flooring is sold in full packs, so round up

Here's the part that catches people out. Hybrid, laminate, timber and bamboo flooring is sold in full packs, never by the loose board or the exact square metre. Each pack covers a set area (for example, around 2.2 m² per pack, though this varies by product, so always check the specific range).

To work out packs, divide your required area (including wastage) by the pack coverage, then always round UP to the next whole pack. You can't buy three-quarters of a pack, and rounding down would leave you short.

A worked example, start to finish

Let's order flooring for that L-shaped living area, using a product that covers 2.2 m² per pack.

So for a 27.5 m² room you'd order 14 packs, which covers 30.8 m². That gives you your wastage allowance plus a spare board or two for peace of mind.

Let the calculator (and our team) do the hard part

If maths isn't your thing, you don't have to do any of this by hand. Every flooring product page on our website has a built-in flooring calculator: just type in your room's square metres and it instantly tells you how many packs to order, wastage included. It's the quickest way to turn a measurement into an order.

Get the numbers exactly right with a free measure

Measuring yourself is perfect for budgeting and getting a feel for quantities. But before you commit, we'd always recommend our free measure and quote, where our team comes out, measures everything precisely (including those tricky doorways and stairs), and double-checks your pack count so nothing is over- or under-ordered. We'll also help you pick the right underlay and trims, and remember our Price Beat Guarantee means we'll beat any genuine written quote by $1 per m². Pop into the showroom at t15/750 Main North Road, Gepps Cross, call us on 0475 877 300, or book your free measure and quote here.