How to Figure Square Yards of Carpet

Sketch the area to be carpeted. This does not need to be to scale, a rough sketch will suffice. Be sure to include all nooks and corners in the area to be carpeted.

Measure the wall lengths. Every wall you sketched onto your pad must be labeled with its dimension. No need to be exact, simply round up to the nearest foot.

Draw a large rectangle over the largest area possible, then draw non-overlapping rectangles over the remaining areas of the sketch until the entire area is accounted for. (It is OK to overlap a little bit for ease of calculation.)

Calculate the area for each of your drawn rectangles (width multiplied by length), and add them all together. The result is the square footage of your floor.

If you have no stairs, skip to step 6. Measure the width of the stairs. Multiply the width by 1.7 (average linear feet of a stair step) and multiply the result by the number of steps. The result is the square footage of the stairs. Add this to the result from step 4 for your total square footage.

Divide the total square footage by 9. The result of this calculation is the square yardage of the area to be carpeted.

Multiply the result from step 6 by 1.1 and round up to the nearest whole number. This allows for 10 percent waste (which is typical for any carpeting project). Your result is the total square yards of carpet you will need to purchase to successfully complete the project.