How do you find out how much tile you would need for a 242 sq ft room?

Answer 1

find the dimensions of each type of tile used. (LxW) length and width multiplied together is area. This concept is useful to putting information into a common form. The form we are seeking is 'how much tile for a xxx square foot room.' So our answer we are seeking is in square footage. Most tile will be small enough to measure in inches with a tape measure. Again if we were to apply this perfectly from a mathematical standpoint, we would not take the dimensions for each tile that is written on the box, and have to account for grout spacers (typically 1/4 to 1/8 of an inch). In this case we would measure each tile's length and width then add 2 times the spacer gap to both the length and width. L+2(1/4) = calculated length, and W+2(1/4) = calculated width. Then multiply both together to get your tile area. Keep in mind we want sq ft, and have measured in sq inches. There are 12 inches in one foot, and 144 inches in one square foot. So we then multiply our answer by 144 to get square footage. Now we have the area of a tile in sq feet. We know we need 242 sq ft to cover so divide that by the area of our tile. The units will cancel (for math geeks conscience) giving us a unitless answer for the amount of tile.

In real life we are estimating amounts of tile since we don't buy them individually. Since we are looking for a good estimate to we have enough to get the job done, but not so many we run out of money we will make assumptions.

The dimensions of the tile written on the box will be taken literally, and we will not account for grout spacing since it is not large enough of a factor to dictate another box of 200 tile.

If we were to use 4x6 in tile, that comes in packages of 150, here is the example of how we would do so:

4*6= 24 in^2 = A [in^2]

24 [in^2] * [ft ^2/ 144 in^2] = 0.167 sq ft = A [ft^2]

150 tiles * 0.167 [sq ft] = 25 sq ft in each package

242 sq ft / 25 sq ft = 9.68 packages

Since we cannot buy 0.68 packages we will round up and have spares.

we will buy 10 packages of tile to cover our square footage of 242.

That will end up being 9.68*150 = 1452 tiles OR in our case of ten packages, 1500 tiles.