People make a big deal out of calculating how many garage floor tiles you need. There are all sorts of designers, calculators and formulas out there. We have three ways for you to automatically estimate your garage flooring project but if you are like me, you might just want to know how to do it yourself. If not, you can skip the soap box and use the link above to get the information you need 🙂
Do you remember when you were in school and they would ask a question similar to ‘There are 5 people on a sinking ship. There is one lifeboat and each lifeboat fits two people. How many trips do you need to make.’ The math nerd in the class would raise his hand and say 2.5. The teacher would chuckle and say ‘you can’t make half a trip’ so the correct answer is three. The same philosophy holds true when you are estimating how many garage floor tiles you need. Scratch that. The same holds true when you are correctly calculating how many garage floor tiles you will need!
The simple answer: How many tiles across the front (round up to the nearest tile)? How many tiles along one side (round up to the nearest tile)? Multiply the two together. That is exactly how many tiles you need.
The longer answer…. Take the width of your room in inches and divide it by the width of your tile in inches. Round up to the next whole number. Do the same thing for the depth. Multiply the two together and that is how many tiles you need.
Why it matters?
A lot of people will say just multiply the length x width and divide by the square feet per tile. In a perfect world that would work. But lets take a room that is 20’3″ x 24’6″ . That would round up to 497 square feet. Assuming a 12″ tile that means you need 497 tiles. Now that might work if you were magically able to take every piece you cut and use it someplace else, but that will leave you with one funny looking garage floor.
Now assume that same 12″ tile. Using our method, we need 21 tiles across the front and 25 tiles along the side. That means in reality you need 525 tiles.
Keep in mind. We all like to think well if I cut 3″ off a tile I can use the remaining 9″ in the next row. Look at the tile above. Once you cut off the side with the lock you need, it is completely useless on that row of tiles — unless you want to split it and use half on each side…. Have fun. 🙂 One last thing: All of our calculators, spreadsheets and designers use this method for you — so you don’t have too.
Remember, offer a full line of garage flooring options and we have the expertise to help you utilize them.
