How to Measure and How Not to Measure for Carpeting
95% of the people in the flooring industry do not know how to measure a room for carpet. These people are the people you don’t want to measure your home. They will measure and add 20% waste to the total square footage since they do not really understand how to calculate carpeting for a home.
Measuring for Carpeting requires a specific mathematical formula. The formula I am about to give you is based on a 12ft wide roll of carpet. Most carpets are made this wide so I am using this as an example. Other widths are 13’6’’wide or 15’ft wide and require different formulas. Two terms you need to understand in carpeting; one is drop, which is a full piece of uncut carpet. If your bedroom is 12 foot wide by whatever foot long then you wouldn’t have to cut this carpet and you would just require a full piece, multiplied by however long the room is. This is called a full drop because you are using the full amount/width of a roll of carpet for that room. So a room that is 12x19 would require a full drop or an uncut carpet measuring 12 foot wide by 19 foot long; no waste needed or should be added thus saving the customer money. The other term is fill. Fill is the carpet that goes in a room that requires a piece of carpet to be cut from the full roll and seemed into the room; attached to the piece that is the dropped piece. An example would be if you had a room that is 19 feet long by 15 feet wide. 12 feet by 19 foot long would be your full drop then one would have to add fill for the area in the room that is the remaining 3 feet by 19 feet long. 12 +3= 15 foot wide folks. 19 foot long is a constant in this example.
Now that you understand the difference between a full drop and a fill piece lets continue. The formula for a 12 foot wide carpet is as follows.
Any fill pieces that are .01 feet wide up to: 3.1 feet wide would require a person to take the length of the room, in this case its 19 feet long, and divide by 4. So your calculation would be 19 divided by 4 = 4.75. So the correct measurement for this room is 12x19 plus a roll of carpet that is 12x4.75 or you could just say that this room requires a roll of carpet 12 feet wide by 23.75 foot long. In the carpet industry we would round this up to a needed carpet roll of 12x24. A roll of carpet 12x24= 288SF.
The incorrect way to measure this room for carpet would be 19x15=285x20% waste = 57+285 for a grand total of 342SF. This is what