Find a tool

Hardwood Flooring Calculator

Mullican's own waste figure, applied rather than mentioned.

An estimate of quantities — box coverage varies by product; type yours.

10' · 120 in · 10 ft · 3.048 m

12' · 144 in · 12 ft · 3.6576 m

120 ft²

Inch Calculator advises about 10% for tile laid straight, which is where this starts; 15% for diagonal, and Alpine 10-15% for herringbone. Mullican advises 5% for wood laid straight. It is added once, to whatever gets cut — the tiles or the planks, and the baseboard. A grout or mortar figure, where the page has one, is worked out on the surface as laid.

This page recalculates as you type. There is no Calculate button.

Answer

Save imageExcel

Boxes

7 × 20 ft² box

120 ft² of floor · 7 boxes

Area to tile 120 ft²
Ticked items cost $763.50
More numbers
With the 10% for cuts 132 ft²
Underlayment 120 ft²
Baseboard 44 ft
DrawingThe project drawn to scale. Area 1: 10' × 12'.10'12'Area 1

Buying noteThe baseboard runs the whole way round the floor here. It does not stop at a doorway, and how many doorways a room has is not something a shape can tell us — take off about 3 ft (1 m) for each.
Buying noteBuy the spare box with the rest, out of the same dye lot. A box bought a month later is a slightly different color, and nobody tells you until it is on the floor.

Breakdown

Surface Measurements Qty Area Share
Area 1 10' × 12' Add ×1 120 ft²

What to buy

Buying noteThe baseboard runs the whole way round the floor here. It does not stop at a doorway, and how many doorways a room has is not something a shape can tell us — take off about 3 ft (1 m) for each.
Buying noteBuy the spare box with the rest, out of the same dye lot. A box bought a month later is a slightly different color, and nobody tells you until it is on the floor.

Shopping list

7 7 × 20 ft² box $665.00 Reference price $53.00. Type your store's. Reference price $48.00. Type your store's. Reference price $95.00. Type your store's.
1 1 × 200 ft² roll $38.00 Reference price $22.00. Type your store's. Reference price $38.00. Type your store's.
4 2 × 16 ft stick + 1 × 12 ft stick + 1 × 8 ft stick $60.50 Reference price $9.50. Type your store's. Reference price $14.00. Type your store's. Reference price $18.50. Type your store's.
Ticked items $763.50

Untick what you already have. Each row has its price beside it — type what your store charges.

Save imageExcel
How this was worked out

Every number below is yours. Each constant links to the row where you can change it.

Area 1 10' × 12' 120 ft²
With the waste for cuts 120 ft² × (1 + 10%) 132 ft²
Boxes to buy 132 ft² ÷ 20 ft² 7 × 20 ft² box · 8 ft² left over
Underlayment 120 ft² × 1 120 ft² → 1 × 200 ft² roll

Change:Underlayment per unit area

Baseboard round the floor 44 ft × (1 + 10%) 48.4 ft → 2 × 16 ft stick + 1 × 12 ft stick + 1 × 8 ft stick
What it comes to 7 × $95.00 + 1 × $38.00 + 2 × $18.50 + 1 × $14.00 + 1 × $9.50 $763.50

Assumptions

Every one of these is editable. Change one and the answer changes with it.

Assumption Value Confidence
Underlayment per unit areaUnderlayment covers the floor once. Rolls with a self-adhesive lap seam are butted rather than overlapped, so there is no second allowance here the way there is under a roof. A roll's printed area is its usable area. ≈ ft²/ft² Trade convention

How many boxes of hardwood

This page opens on a 12 by 14 foot room: 168 square feet, 176.4 with the 5% Mullican advises for a straight lay, which is 9 boxes at 20 square feet each.

The 5% is the part worth noticing. Mullican publish it — 5%, in a 5 to 7% range, for a straight nail-down or glue-down lay — and this page applies it rather than mentioning it in a paragraph underneath. Lowe's own flooring tool advises buying 10% extra and then prints a number with none of it in.

Waste by how it is laid

Layout Mullican advises
Straight5% (5–7%)
Diagonal10–15%
Herringbone or parquet15–20%

Plus one to two spare boxes on top, which Mullican also advise and which this page leaves to you — a spare box is a decision about how long you intend to live there, not a percentage.

Solid or engineered, and the one difference

For the area, none: both come in cartons marked with a square footage and the division is the same. Where they differ is what goes under them and whether the room is the right room. Solid hardwood is nailed to a wood subfloor and does not belong over a slab or below grade; engineered can be floated or glued and will go over concrete with the right barrier.

If yours is floating, it wants underlayment, and the page has a row for it. If it is nailed down, it wants rosin paper or a felt underlayment instead, and that is a different product with a different coverage — read the carton.

Acclimation is not waste

Hardwood has to sit in the room it is going into, in its boxes, for days before it is laid, so it reaches the moisture content the house is at. That is not a quantity question and it does not change the order — but it does change the schedule, and a floor laid the day it was delivered is a floor with gaps in it next winter.

Buy the whole order at once for the same reason you buy the spare box at once: boards from one run are milled to one thickness and sorted to one grade. A second order is a different tree.

Board feet, if that is how yours is sold

Unfinished hardwood from a mill is sold by the board foot rather than by the carton. That is a different sum — thickness times width times length — and this page cannot do it, because a board foot needs the thickness and the width of the board rather than the area of the floor. The board foot calculator on this site asks for those three measurements instead.