The complete guide: How to measure for carpet in your home

By / October 10th, 2023 / There are currently 0 comments

Measuring areas of your home to figure out how much your new carpet will cost sounds simple, but some key steps are often overlooked in the measuring process. 

Thankfully, our guide on how to measure for carpet in your home will help you determine the perfect measurements to the exact millimetre, so you can easily get your dream carpet. Before we begin, ensure you have all the essentials to measure your carpet, including a pen or a pencil, a tape measure, a piece of paper and a ruler. Now that you have everything you need, read on to learn how to measure the different areas of your home for carpet!

Table of contents

How to measure a standard room

The measuring process is very straightforward if your room is square or rectangular. Simply measure the width and length of the room at the widest points and then multiply those measurements together to work out the floor’s surface area. We recommend adding at least 10 centimetres to your width and length measurements; this added size will allow for any deviations or cutting when the carpet is fitted.

It’s important to measure your room as if your built-in units, fireplaces, or anything against your walls aren’t there. This will ensure you’re getting the correct measurements for your room. The fitter will cut around these units when fitting.

The first step when buying a new carpet should always be measuring your space, as many carpets are available in different widths (usually 4 and 5 metres). When you decide on style, you can get the right feel for your room with carpet samples from Morgan & Quinn.

How to measure an irregularly shaped room

An irregularly shaped room means a room that isn’t simply square or rectangular and has odd corners, recesses, alcoves or other elements that impact the shape and amount of sides the room has. Each element of your irregularly shaped room should be taken into account when measuring.

Measure each side and wall of the room, including doorways, window bays and recesses. If your room has alcoves, measure the depths of these, as this can be useful information should you need to join several pieces of carpet together.

To calculate the surface area of your odd-shaped room, the easiest method is to divide your room into smaller rectangles. Using the method mentioned in the last section, length multiplied by width, work out the area of the smaller rectangles before adding them all together to calculate the total surface area.

We recommend adding at least 10 cm to this total to give yourself some extra space to work with.

How to measure your landing

Measuring a landing can be very similar to measuring a standard room, with the addition of factoring in the top step from your stairs into the measurement. You need to account for the top step to ensure the carpet flows effortlessly onto your stairs once properly fitted.

To mark out your area for fitting:

  1. Stand on your top step and mark where the landing meets the stairs.
  2. Measure the width and length of your landing as you would for a standard room, and use the surface area calculation method to get your measurement.
  3. Add on the surface area of the top step and, as mentioned previously, add an extra 10 cm to your measurements to be safe.

If you have a mid-landing on your staircase, measure the same way and ensure that the step below your mid-landing is included in the measurement. Again, add 10 cm to your measured areas to allow for any deviations.

How to measure your hall

Hallways can be very intricate due to the doorways and their unique shapes, so it’s important to measure these areas of your home with great care. Not every hallway is the same, so they can often be tricky customers to measure.

An L or T-shaped hall can be easily split into several rectangles, and, much like the odd-shaped room, you can work out each rectangle’s surface area before totalling them all up. This would mean that you would need a join for your carpet; if that’s not what you’re after, you can multiply the longest width by the longest length. This would leave you with no need for a join but a fair amount of wasted extra carpet.

If your hall doesn’t resemble an L or T, we recommend measuring as you would a standard room. Multiply the length by the width and take note of any alcoves or recesses.

How to measure your stairs

Stairs require a different method than most areas of your house that you’d like carpeted. There is no need to measure the length of the stairs when preparing to have them carpeted. 

First, count the amount of stairs that you have. Ensure that each step has the same width before measuring the riser (height) and tread (depth) of just one step. This is the vertical length of the step. Multiply this number by the number of steps to calculate your surface area. 

Repeat this process for each step if you have differently-sized steps throughout your staircase.

Carpets at Morgan & Quinn

If you want to improve your home with a new carpet, Morgan & Quinn’s excellent selection of carpets from top brands such as Abingdon and Cormar gives you quality in abundance. Free samples are available for many products so you can get a feel for how your new carpet will look and suit your decor.

Shop high-quality carpets for every room in your home at Morgan & Quinn, including bedroom, hallway and lounge carpets.

Related Articles

Comments are closed here.