Tile Calculator
Calculate how many tiles you need for a floor, wall or backsplash, by tile size and area.
What you need
220
Tiles needed — Rounded up, waste allowance included.
- Area to cover
- 200 sq ft
- Area including waste allowance
- 220 sq ft
Estimates for planning. Confirm quantities with your supplier before ordering — see the assumptions below for the figures used.
Shop this project
The supplies a tile job usually takes. Quantities come straight from your calculation above — check them against your supplier's pack sizes before ordering.
Your shopping list
- Tile
- 220 tiles
Materials
Tile
Thinset mortar
Grout
Prep & extras
Cement backer board
Tools & equipment
Tile spacers
Notched trowel and grout float
Tile cutter or wet saw
Rentable. A manual snap cutter handles straight cuts in ceramic.
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How to use the tile calculator
Tile counts are unforgiving: every cut edge wastes most of a tile, and a mid-job reorder from a different lot rarely matches. Pick your tile size and area to get a count with a realistic waste allowance.
What this calculator assumes
Every estimate depends on figures that vary by supplier and conditions. These are the ones used here, so you can sanity-check the result against your own quote.
- Coverage per tile is taken from your entry above — always check the actual packaging, because it varies by product.
- A 10% waste allowance is applied by default. Increase it for diagonal layouts, busy patterns or rooms with lots of corners.
- Tiles are rounded up to whole units.
- Tile counts are based on nominal size. Actual tiles are slightly smaller to allow for grout joints, which the waste allowance absorbs.
- Thinset, grout, backer board and trim pieces are not included. Coverage for those depends on tile size, trowel notch and joint width.
- For a diagonal layout, add 15% rather than 10% — every perimeter tile becomes a triangular cut.
Frequently asked questions
How many 12x12 tiles do I need per square foot?
Exactly one, which makes 12 by 12 inch tile the easiest size to estimate. A 100 square foot floor needs 100 tiles plus waste — so 110 with a 10% allowance.
How much tile waste should I allow?
Ten percent for a straight grid in a rectangular room. Fifteen percent for diagonal or herringbone patterns, and up to 20% for large-format tile in a small or irregular room, where a single bad cut wastes a lot of material.
How much thinset and grout do I need?
As a rough guide, a 50 lb bag of thinset covers 60 to 95 square feet with a quarter-inch notched trowel, and less under large-format tile. Grout depends on tile size and joint width — a 25 lb bag typically does 100 to 200 square feet of standard tile. Check the bag for your combination.
Should I buy tile from one batch?
Yes. Ceramic and porcelain shade varies between firings, and the batch number is printed on the box for exactly this reason. Buy your full quantity plus spares in one order and keep a few tiles — a discontinued line makes a future repair very obvious.
How much extra should I buy?
The default here is 10%. Buying a little extra from the same batch is cheap insurance — colours and lots shift between production runs, so a mid-project top-up rarely matches. Keep the offcuts for future repairs.
How do I handle an L-shaped or irregular room?
Split it into rectangles, work out each one separately and add the results. Measure at the widest point of each section and ignore small alcoves unless you are covering them too.
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