How to Figure Drywall Use Per Square Foot

A home drywall job is not easy. Drywall sheets are heavy and tough to position without a little practice. One of the first things you will need to do is figure how much drywall you need. It's a basic area calculation, and you don't want to overspend, but coming up a sheet short at the end of the job means another run to the supply store. For home jobs, smaller sheets of drywall are easier. That means 4-by-8-foot sheets, rather than the longer 4-by-10-foot sheets. Given that the sheets are so large and a mistake could ruin a sheet, it pays to pad the estimate more than you would for other construction projects.

Things You'll Need

• Measuring tape
• Calculator

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Instructions

1. • 1

     Measure the wall height.

   • 2

     Measure the wall length.

   • 3

     Multiply the height and width. For example, if you have an 11-foot ceiling and 16-foot wall, that's an area of 176 square feet.

   • 4

     Calculate the area for all walls and add the totals. For example, two walls at 176 feet and two at 242 feet total 836 square feet.

   • 5

     Divide the total square feet by the area of one sheet of drywall. For a 4-by-8-foot sheet, that's 32 square feet. Here, the result is 26.13, or just over 26 sheets.

   • 6

     Multiply the number of sheets by 1.15 to add 15 percent for waste. The result in this example is 30 sheets.