Enter your room size and tile dimensions to get the exact tile count, area, and box quantity — with a safe wastage allowance built in.
Ordering tiles by eye, or rounding "roughly" from a room's dimensions, is one of the most common ways a tiling job runs into a mid-project shortage. Unlike paint or cement, tiles are typically dye-lot specific — a box bought a few weeks later to make up a shortfall can be a visibly different shade, especially with natural-stone-look porcelain tiles. Getting the count right in one order, with a sensible buffer, avoids that mismatch entirely.
The calculation itself is simple — total area divided by the area of one tile — but the details that trip people up are the wastage allowance (cutting loss at edges and corners) and unit mismatches, like measuring a room in feet but a tile box labeled in millimeters. This calculator handles both in one place.
A quick reference while you shop
| Tile size | Typical use | Tiles per sq ft (approx.) |
|---|---|---|
| 300 × 300 mm (1×1 ft) | Small rooms, bathrooms | 1.0 |
| 300 × 450 mm | Wall tiles, kitchens | 0.75 |
| 600 × 600 mm (2×2 ft) | Living rooms, floors | 0.25 |
| 800 × 800 mm | Large living areas | 0.14 |
| 600 × 1200 mm | Premium large-format floors | 0.125 |
A few common situations
Get an accurate tile count before ordering for a full house or a single room during construction.
Calculate both floor and wall tile quantities separately for a bathroom remodel.
Work out wall tile needs for a backsplash area, after subtracting cabinet and window space.
Cross-check a contractor's material estimate against an independent calculation before approving a quote.
Using 600×600mm (2×2 ft) floor tiles, 8% wastage, 4 tiles per box
Room area = 12 × 10 = 120 sq ft
One tile = 2 ft × 2 ft = 4 sq ft per tile
Base tiles needed = 120 ÷ 4 = 30 tiles
With 8% wastage = 30 × 1.08 ≈ 33 tiles
Boxes needed (4 tiles/box) = 33 ÷ 4 ≈ 9 boxes (rounded up)
Wastage covers tiles lost to cutting at edges, corners, around door frames, and the occasional breakage during handling. A simple rectangular room with no obstructions can get away with as little as 5%, since most cuts are clean, full-length pieces that can be positioned efficiently.
Rooms with more corners, alcoves, or fixtures (like an L-shaped room, or a bathroom with a step-down shower area) generate more small, unusable offcuts, so 10% is a safer default. Diagonal and herringbone patterns cut tiles at an angle, which wastes more material per cut — 12-15% wastage is recommended for these layouts.
Larger tiles also tend to waste more proportionally when a cut piece is needed, since a single cut can turn an 800mm tile into two unusable fragments if the remaining space doesn't fit either half — keeping this in mind when tiling with large-format tiles in a smaller or irregularly shaped room is worth the extra buffer.
5% wastage is typical for a simple rectangular room. 10% is safer for rooms with many corners, diagonal (herringbone) patterns, or larger tiles that need more cutting.
For wall tiling, yes — subtract door and window openings from the total wall area first. For floor tiling, door openings are usually small enough to ignore, but a walk-in closet or alcove should be added as a separate area.
Grout lines take up a small amount of space between tiles, which very slightly increases the number of tiles needed compared to edge-to-edge tiles. This calculator doesn't adjust for grout width directly, which is why the wastage percentage is there to absorb small differences like this.
It varies by tile size and brand — commonly 4 to 10 tiles per box for larger floor tiles, and more for smaller wall tiles. Check the box or ask the supplier for the exact count.
Wall tiles are typically thinner and lighter, made for vertical, low-traffic surfaces, while floor tiles are thicker and more slip- and impact-resistant to handle foot traffic.
Common floor tile sizes include 600x600mm (2x2 ft), 800x800mm, and 300x300mm, while wall tiles are often 300x450mm or 250x375mm.
Yes. Enter the area to be tiled — whether that's a floor or a wall — and the size of the tile you're using, and the calculation works the same way for both.
Not directly — pattern-based layouts generate more offcuts than a straight grid layout. For these patterns, use a wastage allowance of 12-15% instead of the standard 5-10%.
For an L-shaped or irregular room, split it into two or more rectangular sections, calculate each separately, and add the totals together.
It's common practice to keep a few extra tiles from the same batch after installation, since tile dye lots can vary slightly between production runs.