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Tile and Flooring Buying Guide: Packs, Waste and Batches
Flooring materials are sold in fixed packs, cut with waste, and tinted in batches — three traps that catch most first-time buyers. This guide shows how to order once and order right.
Packs, not pieces
Laminate, vinyl and engineered wood are sold in packs covering a fixed area — usually 2–2.5 m². Tiles come in boxes of a fixed piece count. You cannot buy half a pack, so every order rounds up.
The Flooring Calculator and Tile Calculator both do the rounding for you: enter the room area and pack coverage, and they return whole packs including waste.
Waste: the percentage that saves the job
Every row of flooring ends with a cut plank, and offcuts shorter than 30 cm usually cannot start the next row. Straight layouts in rectangular rooms waste about 5%. Rooms with alcoves and doorways: 7–10%. Diagonal and herringbone layouts: 12–15%.
Tiles follow the same logic, with one addition: breakage. Expect 2–3% of tiles to arrive chipped or break during cutting — large-format tiles especially.
Batch numbers are not bureaucracy
The same tile model from two production batches can differ visibly in shade; laminate batches differ in locking profile tolerances. The batch (tone/calibre) number is printed on every pack — check that all your packs match before signing for delivery.
Keep one spare pack unopened. Most stores accept returns of unopened packs within 14–30 days, and if you do need a repair in five years, a plank from the original batch is priceless.
Measure like a pro
Measure at floor level, include alcoves and measure into doorways — flooring continues under the door leaf. For L-shaped rooms, split into rectangles. The Room Area Calculator handles the main rectangle plus an alcove in one pass.
Then add the waste percentage appropriate to your layout, and only then divide by pack coverage. Area first, waste second, packs last.