Calculating How Much Wood You’ll Need for a Repeating Pattern Floor

Calculating the wood you need for an entire floor covering area can be done regardless of the size or shape of your room. For standard shapes and regular types of measurements, check out our Calculating How Much Wood You’ll Need page. The calculations to determine how much wood you’ll need for a floor with specific patterns that call for different widths are slightly different. 

For the sake of example, let’s say you desire to have a repeating pattern of 3inch, 5inch and 6inch planks all across one room of the house. 

1. Divide the total square footage of the room by this number. Let’s say you figured out you need 1000 square feet of wood for your floor. Divide 1000 by 14 to get 71.43.
2. Now you can use that answer (71.43) to find out how much of each width you need. Take 71.43 and multiply it by the width of each plank you need. So 71.43 x 3 = 214.29 square feet, 71.43 x 5 = 357.15 square feet and 71.43 x 6 = 428.58 square feet.
3. Add these results together and you should get the total amount of square feet you need for the job. In this case, the three totals together equal 1000.02. The “.02” is to account for the rounding up when a number ends in things like “.1766666666” to “.18.”

Always take into consideration that you’ll need about 10% extra to account for waste. Waste includes the small end pieces or odd widths that have to be custom fit to the edges of the walls. Further, because the wood displays a variety of tree markings and color shades within each box, you may find a plank here and there you don’t want to appear in the final installation. You can calculate waste by multiplying 10% to the total square footage you need for the room and then divide the excess into three equal parts to order for the three different lengths.