Enter a room's length and width, plus a waste allowance and price per square yard, to estimate how much carpet you need and what it will cost.

How to Use the Carpet Calculator and Price Estimator

Type the room's length and width in feet, then check the waste percentage before touching the price field — closets, alcoves, and doorways eat into a roll faster than a plain rectangle suggests. Leave price per square yard at $0 to see quantity only.

Carpet ships on rolls that run 12 or 15 feet wide in most markets, and few rooms happen to match that width edge to edge. Installers cut around the roll's width, which is why real orders almost always include some unused carpet even in a perfectly rectangular room — the waste allowance below covers exactly that, not just cutting mistakes.

The Math Behind the Estimate

Multiply length by width for raw floor area, add the waste percentage, then convert to square yards, since that's how broadloom carpet is priced and cut:

Area = Length × Width
Area with waste = Area × (1 + Waste % ÷ 100)
Carpet needed (sq yd) = ⌈Area with waste ÷ 9⌉

The result rounds up to a whole square yard. A yard of carpet doesn't come in fractions once it's cut and seamed, so 8.2 yards on paper becomes a 9-yard order in practice.

What a 10% Waste Allowance Actually Covers

Ten percent is the standard starting point for a simple rectangular room with a single doorway. Push it toward 15–20% for rooms with bay windows, multiple closets, or an irregular footprint — every seam and offcut adds up. Stairs and rooms with a lot of cuts often run higher still.

Padding, Tack Strip, and Installation Aren't Priced Here

This estimator only totals the carpet material itself. Underlay, tack strip, and labor are typically quoted separately by an installer and vary by region far more than carpet material does — budget for them on top of whatever this tool returns.