LayoutWise

Carpet Calculator

Enter the room. You see how the pieces come off the roll and where the seams fall, plus the real square yards to buy and the pad and tack strip.

Your room

1. Room
Length
ft
in
Width
ft
in
2. Carpet

Carpet

38.7 yd²

348 sq ft

Pieces

2

14' 6" each

Seams

1

14 ft of tape

Waste

55%

trim and leftover

Layout

Pile runs the width of the room

Clay dashes are seams; keep them out of doorways and high-traffic paths where you can. Every piece must have its pile running the same way.

Shopping list

  • ✓Carpet: 38.7 sq yd — 2 pieces 14' 6" long off a 12 ft roll
  • ✓Carpet pad: 27 sq yd
  • ✓Tack strip: 57 ft (15 x 4 ft strips)
  • ✓Seam tape: 14 ft (hot-melt), for 1 seam
  • ✓Transition strip at each doorway, and staples for the pad

Patterned carpet needs extra length for matching at seams. Stairs aren't included — each stair takes about 2 linear feet of a 3 ft-wide piece.

Why carpet takes more than the floor area

Carpet comes off a roll, usually 12 feet wide, and you pay for the full width of every piece you cut. A room up to 12 feet wide fits in one piece. Wider rooms need a second piece and a seam — and the leftover width of that second piece is usually waste.

Example: a 16' x 14' bedroom is 24.9 square yards of floor. Run the carpet the 14-foot way and it takes two 14' 6" pieces (3" extra at each end for trimming) off a 12-foot roll — 38.7 square yards with one seam. That's why carpet quotes are so much higher than the room size suggests.

Seams and pile direction

The calculator picks the layout with the fewest seams, then the least carpet. Try to keep seams out of doorways and walking paths, and make sure every piece has its pile running the same direction — otherwise the pieces look like different colors.

Pad, tack strip and seam tape

Pad covers the floor area (no roll-width waste). Tack strip runs around the walls but not across doorways, and seam tape runs the length of each seam.

Considering a hard floor instead? Try the flooring calculator.