A square is 100 square feet
Roofing is quoted in squares. One square is 100 square feet of roof — not of footprint, and not of anything measured on the ground. A 1,341.6 square foot roof is 13.42 squares, and that is the figure a supplier, an estimator and a dumpster rental all work from.
If you already have the area — off an aerial measurement report, a contractor's estimate, or your own figuring — type it here and get the squares and the rest of the list. The area this page wants is the area up the slope: a measurement report has already applied the pitch, so there is nothing left to multiply.
| Roof area | Squares | Bundles at 10% | Rolls of synthetic |
|---|---|---|---|
| 800 ft² | 8.00 | 27 | 1 |
| 1,200 ft² | 12.00 | 40 | 2 |
| 1,600 ft² | 16.00 | 53 | 2 |
| 2,400 ft² | 24.00 | 80 | 3 |
| 3,200 ft² | 32.00 | 106 | 4 |
What an area cannot tell you
An area has no outline. The starter course, the ridge cap and the drip edge are all counted from edge lengths — eaves, rakes, ridges, hips — and an area typed in has none of them, so those rows come out as nothing and the page says so above the list. The shingles, the underlayment and the nails go by area and are right.
If your report gives the edge lengths too — most of them do, under names like "eave", "rake", "ridge" and "hip" — the roofing calculator works them out from a footprint and a pitch instead, and you can check its figures against the report's.
Squares and the figures around them
A square of architectural shingles weighs about 230 to 250 pounds, so a 20 square roof is between 4,600 and 5,000 pounds of material going up a ladder, and the same coming down if you are tearing off. Three bundles make roughly a square, and a bundle is 70 to 80 pounds — one at a time is the limit for most people.