How many tiles do I need for my room?

If you have a nice and simple square or rectangular room, then calculating your floor area is pretty straightforward, you can multiply the width by the length in metres of the wall or floor you are looking to tile, to give you the total square metre area of tiles you need.

Of course, it is normally more complex than this as there are often obstacles to work around. In these scenarios, I often find it easiest to sketch out the space, breaking it down into rectangle or square areas, and then working out the square metre area for each, adding them all together to give me my total area.

Don’t forget to then add a 10% extra to the area as this will allow for any wastage, such as breakages and cutting. If you’re using large format tiles, then it’s advisable to increase this to a 20% extra.

Now you know your total area you need tiled in m2, you now need to work out how many tiles will fit into the space. You do this by multiplying the width by the length of an individual tile in metres to give you the area. So, for example, a 60x60cm tile will be 0.36m².

You can then divide the total area you need tiled in m², by the area of a single tile in m², and this will tell you how many tiles you need.

Let’s run through an example. I have a wall which is 2.4m high, by 3m long. 2.4 x 3 equals 7.2m. For the 10% extra for wastage I’m going to multiply 7.2 by 1.1 which equals 7.92.  My tiles are 60x60cm which in metres is 0.6×0.6. To work out their area I’m going to multiply 0.6 by 0.6 which gives me 0.36.  I then divide the total wall area with wastage of 7.92 by the tile area of 0.36 and this tells me I need 22 tiles.