subject: How To Measure And How Not To Measure For Carpeting [print this page] 95% of the people in the flooring industry do not know how to measure a room for carpet. These people are the people you don"t want to measure your home. They will measure and add 20% waste to the total square footage since they do not really understand how to calculate carpeting for a home.
Measuring for carpeting requires a specific mathematical formula. The formula I am about to give you is based on a 12ft wide roll of carpet. Most carpets are made this wide so I am using this as an example. Other widths are 13"6""wide or 15"ft wide and require different formulas. Two terms you need to understand in carpeting; one is drop, which is a full piece of uncut carpet. If your bedroom is 12 foot wide by whatever foot long then you wouldn"t have to cut this carpet and you would just require a full piece, multiplied by however long the room is. This is called a full drop because you are using the full amount/width of a roll of carpet for that room. So a room that is 12x19 would require a full drop or an uncut carpet measuring 12 foot wide by 19 foot long; no waste needed or should be added thus saving the customer money. The other term is fill. Fill is the carpet that goes in a room that requires a piece of carpet to be cut from the full roll and seemed into the room; attached to the piece that is the dropped piece. An example would be if you had a room that is 19 feet long by 15 feet wide. 12 feet by 19 foot long would be your full drop then one would have to add fill for the area in the room that is the remaining 3 feet by 19 feet long. 12 +3= 15 foot wide folks. 19 foot long is a constant in this example. 19 Feet Long
Master Bedroom Example
12 Feet WideFull drop would go here 12x19= 228sf
Carpet is 12 foot wide so whole roll goes 15 Feet Wide Here.
3 Feet Wide Fill goes here or a piece offs another roll. 19 Feet Long
Now that you understand the difference between a full drop and a fill piece lets continue. The formula for a 12 foot wide carpet is as follows.
Any fill pieces that are .01 feet wide up to: 3.1 feet wide would require a person to take the length of the room, in this case its 19 feet long, and divide by 4. So your calculation would be 19 divided by 4 = 4.75. So the correct measurement for this room is 12x19 plus a roll of carpet that is 12x4.75 or you could just say that this room requires a roll of carpet 12 feet wide by 23.75 foot long. In the carpet industry we would round this up to a needed carpet roll of 12x24. A roll of carpet 12x24= 288SF.
The incorrect way to measure this room for carpet would be 19x15=285x20% waste = 57+285 for a grand total of 342SF. This is what 95% of other flooring companies charge customers since their reps do not know how to measure carpeting. The customer then ends up paying almost 20% more for carpeting in this room than they should have. 20% more is a huge rip off and in some cases adds up to enough at the end of a job for a carpet installer to take the extra carpet home and sell it on the street later.
The carpet formula for a 12 foot wide roll of carpeting has 4 fill formulas:
.01 feet wide up to 3.0 feet wide divide by 4
3.1 feet wide up to 5.0 feet wide divide by 3
5.1 feet wide up to 6.0 feet wide divide by 2
6.1 feet wide just = a full drop piece of carpeting
I go over how to use all these formulas in my essay on how to properly measure carpet on our Texas Best Flooring Company blog under carpeting. This article is about not getting ripped off so I will continue with the second way not to get ripped off.
How Does Your Carpet Come Delivered? Avoiding the Carpet Delivery Rip Off.
Once you figure out how much carpet you need you need to ask the manufacture of the carpet or the carpet sales rep how many yards or linear feet are in the role of carpet you are buying. Most 12 foot wide rolls of carpet are 150 feet long so 12"x150" or 1800SF per roll. If your home measurement requires any roll of carpeting 12"x150" or anything less than one full roll (12x150 or less) then the roll of carpet that shows up to your home, on the installers truck, should be one solid roll of carpet. If an installer shows up with two separate rolls or in some cases three separate rolls then you should not let them unload the carpet onto your property. In fact you should boot him off your property and get your money back from the rip off flooring company.
This is how the scam works. The customer is sold a new full piece of carpet but the flooring company wants to make more money on the job so they go to the supplier of the carpet or they themselves are the supplier and they take cuts of carpeting from two or three different rolls in their warehouse. These are called remnants. These are cuts or combined cuts from other past customer"s jobs that did not require a full roll of carpet. Did the salesman give you a remnant price when they sold you the carpet? No they didn"t.
Remnants are sometimes cheaper than a full roll of carpet because the color or dye lot is different from one roll to the next and the texture sometimes slightly varies as the flooring company may take a cut from a carpet that has been in their warehouse for a year and combine it with the same type of carpet that is from a newer dye lot remnant. I am not saying all remnants are bad. A remnant can be almost a full roll of carpet in some cases which is fine but why is the installer bringing two or more rolls of carpet when the maker of the carpet makes the carpet in 12"x150" rolls. The flooring company you bought the carpet from should take a 12"x125" cut from a full roll and leave the difference (the remnant 12"x25") for someone else. The point is you didn"t pay for two different carpets that were produced at different times.
You"re getting ripped off!
If you but a carpet that is 12x125 what do you think the flooring company does with the excess 12x25 throw it away? No they sell it as a remnant or they make more money by making it a part of another customers order. The flooring company combines remnants in 2-3 piece orders and passes it to a customer who should have had a one piece order. So the real rip off is when a customer needs a 12"x150" and an installer shows up with 3 rolls of carpet totaling 12"x150". Every roll was made at a different time, every roll is aged differently and will not look the same in your home if the remnants are mixed and matched.
Golden rule is: One full roll of carpet for all homes that require one roll or less.
Apartment managers usually buy up all the remnants from flooring companies and carpet suppliers so cheap and if a flooring company can get away with charging a customer full price for the same combined remnants then they don"t have to lose money to the wiser property management companies.
