FAQ - How to work out room sizesPublished 10/05/2015What do you get asked most? - Helen Wilson
We are starting a short series on frequently asked questions. Having been in business for over 40 years we have been asked almost anything you can think of regarding flooring and fitting. For this blog I asked our Shop Manager, Helen Wilson, to see what our customers want to know most and what her answer is.
Helen’s most frequently asked question was:
“How do I know how much carpet I need for this room?”
Quite reasonably customers like to have rough idea how much a room is going to cost but sometimes it isn’t quite as easy as working out the basic square meterage of the room.
To work out the area in square metres you would times the length of the room by the width of the room. This is fine if you are working with hard floorings such as laminate, vinyl or wood.
However, carpets are slightly different. Carpet is bought by a set width, say 4 or 5 metres, so you can’t choose the exact width you need. When working out carpet you must take the width into account i.e:
EXAMPLE: If you have a room 3.00m by 4.50 m you will need to work on: 3.00 m x 5.00 m as you can’t buy 4.50 m wide. Hence you will need 15.00 (3.00 x 5.00) square metres not 13.50 square metres (3.00 x 4.50 m).
If you want to work out underlay then you can work on your room sizes as it is fitted to the exact space and there is no waste. In this case 13.50 square metres.
If you want to work out gripper fixings (the strips with spikes to stretch your carpet on to if you are using underlay) then you need to add up the length needed around the room i.e. in our example 3.00 m + 4.50 m + 3.00 m + 4.50 m = 15.00 and this is quantified in linear metres.
You may need all the elements mentioned or just some but hopefully this gives a good guide to working out a basic room. Hall , stairs and landing combinations are very different and often require proper planning to make best use of the widths available.
This is not a problem as we offer a free, no obligation estimate service so we work out a price for you based on your choice of flooring.
