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The usual answer is a rule of thumb: floor area plus 5–15% for waste. The exact answer is a laying plan. This guide shows the difference — in numbers.
Try it on a demo room →Adding 5–15% on top of the square metres is quick — and that is the only thing it has going for it. The allowance is blind to everything that actually drives waste:
We ran our layout engine over thousands of laying plans — 273 room shapes × 6 plank and tile formats × 5 patterns — and counted the actual offcuts. There is no single number. Every figure below is SIMULATED from that engine, not a measured pilot.
A flat allowance is wrong in both directions. Against the 15% rule the exact plan buys a median of 6.5% of the floor less — real money left on the shelf. Yet that same 15% rule still comes up short in 23% of layouts, and the tighter +5% allowance is short in 71% — a second trip to the shop and a new batch whose colour may not match.
SIMULATED, not a measurement. Every figure here comes from our layout engine — the same one behind the free planner — run over generated rooms, not from a measured installation. Autolay's −10% material figure is a conservative working target against over-ordering, not a result of this study.
Our planner does what your installer does on site, just before you buy: it lays every plank virtually — row by row, in your pattern, in your room shape — reuses offcuts where the pattern allows it, and then counts: full planks, cut pieces, packs.
Worked example — 17.60 m² living room, oak planks 50 × 7 cm: the 15% rule of thumb adds 2.64 m² of extra material. The simulated layout needs just 3.4% — 0.60 m². Two square metres of oak that never get bought.
The result is a shopping list, not an estimate: exact plank counts, pack quantities and a printable cut list you can take to the store or hand to your installer.
The Autolay planner is completely free: trace your room from a photo, plan or scan, pick a pattern, and get the exact material list with pack counts. No installation, no trial, no card — a free account is only needed to upload your own plans and save projects.
