How Much Laminate or Vinyl Plank Flooring to Buy
Buy the room's square footage plus 10% for a straight plank layout. A 12 × 15 ft room is 180 sq ft, so you'd buy about 198 sq ft: 10 boxes of a typical 20 sq ft carton. Here's the full shopping list, including the extras people forget. The flooring calculator handles multiple rooms and box counts.
1. Measure every room
- Measure wall to wall, not baseboard to baseboard, and multiply length × width.
- Split L-shaped rooms and open-plan spaces into rectangles.
- Include closets, and any area under appliances that will sit on the new floor (like a fridge you'll slide back in).
- Add hallways that the planks will run through without a break.
2. Add waste for cuts
| Situation | Add |
|---|---|
| Simple rectangular room, straight planks | 7–10% |
| Several small rooms, closets, lots of door openings | 10–15% |
| Diagonal layout | 15% |
| Herringbone or chevron | 20% or more |
Most stores accept unopened boxes back, so erring on the high side costs little.
3. Convert to boxes
boxes = room sq ft × (1 + waste %) ÷ sq ft per box, rounded up
Carton sizes vary a lot (often 15–30 sq ft), so always use the number printed on the product you're buying.
4. The extras
- Underlayment: many vinyl planks and some laminates have it attached. If not, buy rolls to cover the floor area; a common roll covers 100 sq ft. Over concrete, use one with a vapor barrier.
- Baseboard or quarter round: measure the room's perimeter and subtract door openings. A 12 × 15 ft room has a 54 ft perimeter; minus a 3 ft door, that's 51 ft of trim. Trim usually comes in 8–16 ft lengths, so add one extra piece.
- Transitions: one per doorway where the new floor meets a different floor (T-molding, reducer or threshold), plus stair nose pieces for any steps.
- Spacers, tapping block and pull bar: often sold as a kit.
Worked example: two bedrooms and a hallway
- Bedroom 1: 12 × 12 = 144 sq ft
- Bedroom 2: 10 × 11 = 110 sq ft
- Hallway: 3 × 12 = 36 sq ft
- Total: 290 sq ft; with 12% waste for the extra doorways: 325 sq ft
- At 23.6 sq ft per box: 13.8, so 14 boxes
Before installing
- Let laminate and many vinyl planks acclimate in the room for the time the maker specifies, often 24–48 hours.
- Open boxes from different cartons and mix planks as you go, so color and grain variation spreads evenly.
- Keep one unopened box for future repairs: product lines get discontinued.