Flooring takeoff

Trace one closed shape per room, with every edge along the interior finished face of the wall, the room-side drywall or plaster the floor butts against. Do not trace to the centerline, the stud line, or the exterior face: the centerline over-measures by half the wall thickness all around. The basis is RICS NRM2 Section 28, which measures floor finishings net in contact with the base. Property standards such as IPMS and ANSI/BOMA Z65.1 measure to the room interior too, but they describe gross or rentable area, not a finish takeoff.

Measure at floor level, not at baseboard height. Finished flooring tucks roughly 3/8 to 1/2 inch under the base, and wood and floating floors leave a 3/8 to 1/2 inch expansion gap the base then covers, so neither the base reveal nor the gap reduces the measured area. At a doorway, the boundary bridges straight across, jamb to jamb, because the floor is continuous. Keep each room as one shape, and follow closets, alcoves, and recesses in and back out.

Door openings are never a deduction, because the boundary already bridges them. What gets deducted are fixed obstructions the floor cannot run under: full-height columns and piers, chimney breasts and hearths, stair openings to the floor below, and large built-in equipment pads.

The size below which you ignore a void is the one figure that changes by region. Under RICS NRM2 Section 28, the area is net in contact with the base, with no deduction for any void up to 1.00 square metre (about 10.76 square feet). North American practice has no statutory standard of measurement and codifies no void threshold: it measures the full footprint to the walls and lets the waste allowance absorb small penetrations. Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and continental Europe generally follow the metric 1.00 square metre logic through standards in the RICS tradition (CIQS, ANZSMM, DIN 18365 in Germany). NRM2 also bills narrow runs separately: floor finish in widths up to 600 millimetres, such as a corridor, is taken apart from the general area because the labour per unit differs.

Whether the floor area includes the footprint under cabinets and islands is the most consequential flooring-specific call, and it is an install-sequence decision driven by the flooring type, not a measurement standard. Floor-first products (nailed or glued wood, sheet vinyl, carpet) run the full room footprint, including under cabinets and islands, so you measure the whole room to the walls; floor-first is the common default because it protects against moisture and keeps future layouts flexible.

Floating floors (laminate, click vinyl, some engineered) are the exception: they must move freely and cannot be trapped under fixed cabinet weight, so cabinets go in first and the floor stops at the toe-kick. For floating floors, exclude the cabinet and island body footprint but keep the area under movable appliances (refrigerator, range, dishwasher). Tubs, showers, and built-in casework are excluded; toilets and pedestals are not, because the floor runs under them.

Waste applies to the net measured area, never to the boundary, and it rises with both the material and the lay pattern. For wood flooring, straight or running layouts use a common field allowance near 10 percent, while diagonal layouts run higher (angled cuts at every wall leave non-reusable triangles) and herringbone, chevron, and complex patterns run higher still. Resilient plank and tile (luxury vinyl, rubber, cork) behave the same way: a manufacturer minimum around 7 percent for straight luxury vinyl, a safe straight-lay default near 10 percent, more for diagonal and herringbone, and a small uplift for wide planks of about 7 inches or more. Carpet tile is bought by area with a typical allowance in the 5 to 10 percent range.

Treat these percentages as practical presets, not codified figures: the trade associations state the principle (order extra for cuts and defects, more for angled and patterned layouts) but do not publish a sourced table. A 5 percent figure tied to wood grading is often misread; it is a tolerance for off-grade boards, not an install-waste factor.

Broadloom carpet and sheet vinyl come in fixed roll widths (carpet commonly 12 and 15 feet, sheet vinyl 6, 9, and 12 feet) and are sold by the running yard or metre off the roll, so the order is not net area times a waste percentage. It is a fill and cut layout: lay the room's shorter dimension against the roll width, cut running lengths, place the seams, and the leftover roll edge is the real waste. A room whose shorter dimension fits within the roll width runs seamless.

Wider rooms need seams, and CRI 104, the standard for installing commercial carpet, governs where they fall: seams run the length of the area, parallel to main traffic and away from natural light, never perpendicular into a doorway, with all strips in the same pile direction. The seam count itself drives seam tape, weld rod, and seaming labour, so it is tracked separately. Patterned carpet and sheet add a full pattern-repeat cycle to every strip after the first, which can add a fifth or more to the material. CRI 104 sets the seam-layout rules but publishes no waste percentage.

The takeoff unit and the order unit differ by region. In the United States, the takeoff is in square feet, but carpet has historically been ordered in square yards (square feet divided by 9) and then bought by the running yard, while wood and luxury vinyl are bought by the carton. Round each room dimension up to the next whole foot or inch, and round orders up to whole cartons or running yards. Mixing square feet and square yards is the classic carpet-order error.

Metric regions (the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and international practice) work in square metres net to two decimals, with carpet and sheet ordered by the running metre against the roll width. Canada is mixed: drawings are metric, but materials often follow imperial practice.

Flooring is never just the field. Transition strips and thresholds (T-mould, reducer, end-cap, threshold) are counted each at doorways and material changes, or by linear foot where they run continuously; the profile follows the height relationship of the two floors, a T-mould for equal heights and a reducer where they differ. Base and skirting, where it sits in the flooring scope, is measured by linear foot along the inside wall face, lifting across openings and running continuous under windows; resilient cove base is commonly a flooring item, while wood or MDF base is often carried by the trim trade.

Stairs are measured separately, because they cost far more per unit: the linear feet per step is the tread depth plus riser height plus nosing, times the stair width for carpet square yards, while wood treads and risers are counted each. Commercial heat-welded sheet vinyl carries a weld rod ordered by the linear foot of seam. Underlayment, carpet cushion or pad, and acoustic underlay mirror the field area as a separate line; carpet pad often has its own roll width, so its fill and waste are figured independently.

Resilient, wood, and adhered floors fail over a subfloor that is too wet, so a moisture test gates whether a moisture-mitigation line (membrane, vapor barrier, or coating) belongs in scope. The neutral test methods are ASTM F2170, the generally preferred modern method using in-situ relative humidity probes in concrete, and ASTM F1869, which measures the moisture vapor emission rate with calcium chloride; the pass or fail limit is set by the flooring or adhesive manufacturer. Where the subfloor is out of flatness, a self-leveling underlayment or patch is applied first; its area mirrors the field or affected area as a separate line, and the material is ordered by manufacturer coverage at the required pour depth, rounded up to whole bags.

The reported number flips by purpose. Procurement needs the gross quantity (net area plus waste, plus roll-fill drop for carpet and sheet) so that enough material is bought. Progress billing and most bid measures use the net installed area, since you are paid for finished floor, not for offcuts, while cost control tracks both. Measurement standards record the net area, and waste is a pricing and ordering adjustment, never a change to the measured boundary. Exayard reads the plans, traces each room to the interior finished face, and applies these rules by material and region to produce both the net and the order quantities.