Add your rooms, the m² per pack from the label and your waste allowance. You get the whole packs to order, what you'll actually buy, the spare and the cost, with the working shown.
Result
Add a room and the pack coverage to see how many packs you need.
LVT, laminate, engineered wood, tiles and carpet tiles are sold in packs or boxes, and you can't buy 0.4 of a box, so the sum always ends by rounding up.
area with waste = floor area (m²) × (1 + waste %)
packs = area with waste ÷ m² per pack, rounded up to a whole pack
m² bought = packs × m² per pack
A living room of 4.2 × 3.6 m (15.12 m²) and a hall of 3.1 × 2.4 m (7.44 m²) make 22.56 m². The laminate comes in packs of 1.835 m², and with a bay window and three door frames to cut round you allow 10%.
At £30 per m², that's 25.69 × £30 = £770.70. Priced per pack, it's 14 × the pack price. Either way you pay for whole packs.
A 12 m² kitchen in herringbone, allowing 15%, needs 12 × 1.15 = 13.8 m². Say the packs hold 0.8 m²: 13.8 ÷ 0.8 = 17.25, so 18 packs, which is 14.4 m² on the van.
Packs are made in batches, and batches can differ. Amtico's Click Smart Parquet installation guidelines tell fitters to "check packaging to ensure all boxes are all of the same product and batch", and warn that "materials from different batches will vary in terms of shade, texture and gloss". Karndean's rigid core guidelines make checking the design, colour and batch the installer's job before anything goes down, and say claims for clearly identifiable defects won't be accepted after installation.
That's why the rounding matters more than it looks. Going back for two more packs next month can mean a different batch that doesn't match. Order the full quantity at once, check the batch numbers when it arrives, and open several packs as you lay: Karndean's guidelines ask for planks to be unboxed and shuffled so you don't get patches of heavy and light shading.
Waste is the offcuts you can't use anywhere else. Every angle, bay, door frame and pipe adds cuts, and small rooms give offcuts fewer places to go. Herringbone and chevron are cut where every row meets the edge of the room, and a diagonal lay meets every wall at an angle, so both leave more pieces that won't fit elsewhere. Here's what manufacturers and suppliers say, checked 13 September 2026:
| Source | Flooring | What they suggest |
|---|---|---|
| Quick-Step FAQ | Laminate | "A 5% extra floor" for a regular room; 10% extra for "more difficult rooms with many angles, curves, etc." |
| Havwoods UK FAQs | Wood flooring | 8–12% for planks; herringbone or chevron "may need 15-20% wastage"; small areas need more than open spaces |
| Amtico Click Smart Parquet guidelines | Click LVT parquet | At least 15% on rooms under 10 m²; 10% "is a good guide" for larger areas; narrow or awkward spaces may need more |
| Amtico installation FAQ | LVT | "10-20% more than the floor area to ensure ample stock for strips, corners and angles" |
Scroll sideways on a phone to see every column.
The calculator's chips follow these ranges, but they're rules of thumb, not guarantees. We found no manufacturer figure for diagonal lays to quote, so that one is down to you and your fitter.
Pack coverage is rarely a round number, because it's the planks or tiles in the pack multiplied by their size. Quick-Step's Impressive laminate, for example, has 7 planks of 1380 × 190 mm to a pack, listed at 1.835 m² per pack. Round that up to 2 m² and the 22.56 m² job above looks like 13 packs, but 13 real packs only cover 23.86 m² against the 24.82 m² you need: nearly 1 m² short.
Use the m² per pack printed on the label or data sheet. If you only have the plank size, multiply the planks in a pack by the length and width in metres: 7 × 1.38 × 0.19 = 1.835 m². Check the figure is per pack, not per plank or per pallet.
Manufacturers set their own rules for letting flooring adjust to the room before it goes down, and they vary by product. Amtico's Click Smart Parquet guidelines say to leave the boxes flat in the room for 24 hours at 18–25°C. Karndean's rigid core guidelines ask for at least 48 hours out of the packaging on commercial installs, and say acclimatisation is generally not essential on residential installs if the product is already at 18–27°C. Follow the instructions for the product you're laying, not a rule you remember from a different one.
Before any of that, the subfloor has to be right. If it needs levelling first, the smoothing compound calculator works out the bags.
On a quote, the same rounding sets your material cost, which is why BillyBot prices packed flooring in whole packs from your own supplier price lists. Carpet and sheet vinyl are bought off the roll instead, which is where cutting plan software comes in, planning the whole job room by room. For carpet, try the carpet calculator.
BillyBot was built by a flooring business, on 20 years of running one. It runs the office side of the business from first enquiry to final invoice, and its flooring quoting software prices every job on your own rates, as a branded PDF or pushed into Xero, Sage or QuickBooks once you confirm.
Add up the floor area of every room in m², add your waste allowance, then divide by the m² per pack on the label and round up to a whole pack. For 22.56 m² with 10% waste and packs of 1.835 m², that's 24.82 ÷ 1.835 = 13.52, so 14 packs.
It depends on the room and the pattern. Quick-Step suggests 5% extra for a regular room and 10% for rooms with many angles or curves. Havwoods suggests 8–12% for wood planks and says herringbone or chevron may need 15–20%. Small rooms and awkward shapes push waste up.
Because it's the planks or tiles in the pack multiplied by their size. Seven planks of 1380 × 190 mm cover 1.835 m², not 2 m². Always use the figure on the label or data sheet, because rounding it up can leave you a pack short.
You can, but they may come from a different batch. Amtico warns that materials from different batches vary in shade, texture and gloss. It's safer to order the full quantity in one go and check the batch numbers when it arrives.
Keeping the spare from rounding up is worth it for repairs. A later batch may not match, and Amtico's guidelines point out that even the same batch can look different once a floor has been walked on and cleaned for months or years.
Yes. Anything sold by the box or pack works the same way: enter the m² per box from the label. Carpet and sheet vinyl come off a roll, so use a roll-based calculator or a cutting plan for those instead.
BillyBot prices packed flooring in whole packs from your own supplier price lists, and runs the office side of your flooring business from first enquiry to final invoice.
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