Why are some figures side by side instead of in the estimate?

They are different ways to finish the same surface. Tiles, a click floor, carpet and parquet are each worked out on your floor by their own calculator, with what goes with each, so they can be compared on your room. Only the way you choose becomes lines in your project, and choosing another swaps them.

Why does the joint tape change when the ceiling is boarded too?

The angle where the walls meet the ceiling is one joint. Boarding both gives one tape figure that counts it once, rather than a figure for the walls and another for the ceiling that would each count it.

Why does a row ask me something instead of using a default?

A few figures turn on something no measurement of the room can tell: how deep the floor has to be filled to come level, how many doorways meet a different floor, how much light your fittings give. A made-up default there would look like an answer, so the row asks, beside itself, and fills in as soon as you reply.

What happens if I only know how many doors there are, not their size?

A standard interior door stands in for each one — its size is shown under the door boxes, in your units — and everything resting on it is marked as assumed and drops to low confidence until you give the real size.

Does saving send my room anywhere?

No. The room is kept in this browser's own storage with the rest of your project, and nothing on this page makes a network request.

Plan a room

Every trade, one set of measurements

Room planner

Measure a room once and this works out what it needs — the board and insulation, the tiles, paint and paper, the floor and what goes under it, the trim. Each figure comes from the calculator that computes it, run on this room's own walls and openings; each surface you have not decided on is worked out every way, side by side; and every figure opens to the working behind it.

Timber-framed house under construction with ladders, sawhorses and lumber

New roomNot drawn yet

1 Measure the room
2 Choose its finishes
3 Save it to My Project

Give the room a length and a width, and it is drawn here with every figure beside it.

How the planner runs

Give the room its length and width — in metres, feet, or feet and inches as you would write them.
Add the wall height, and how many doors and windows there are; their sizes if you have them.
Say how the walls, ceiling and floor are finished, or leave a surface undecided to see every way of finishing it worked out side by side.
Tick what else is being done — new plasterboard, insulation, a levelled floor — and answer any row that asks you something only you know.
Save it into your project, where the lines can be priced, and where the room opens again next time.

What measuring the whole room changes

A calculator on its own is handed a number and trusts it. The planner hands every calculator the same room: the wall area the plasterboard is cut for is the wall area the primer covers and the tiles are counted over, less the same doors and windows, and the floor the underlay is rolled across is the floor the click planks are counted for. Change one measurement and every figure that rests on it moves together.

It also knows what a list of separate calculators cannot: that the angle where the walls meet the ceiling is taped once however much is boarded, that a casing goes round the room’s own doors at their own size, and that a floor you have not decided on can be worked out as tiles, planks, carpet and parquet at once, each with what goes under it, so the choice is made on figures rather than guesses.

Decisions only a room raises

Which way to finish each surface. Leave a surface undecided and every way is worked out beside the others; choose one and it becomes the room’s rows while the rest stay as a comparison.
Whether the ceiling is boarded with the walls. One answer sets the sheets for each surface, and a single tape and compound figure for all the new board.
Which doorways get a threshold. Only one where the new floor meets a different one, which the room next door decides — so the planner asks rather than counts every door.
How many coats, and whose spread rate. Listed with the assumptions, because nothing about a room’s size can tell them. Change one once and the room keeps it.

Mistakes the planner is built to catch

Taping the wall-to-ceiling angle twice when both are boarded — there is one tape row for the board, whatever it covers.
Buying the floor you were only comparing — a comparison never becomes a line of the estimate until it is chosen.
Forgetting what goes with a finish — the underlay is listed with the planks, the adhesive and grout with the tiles.
Ordering against a figure with a default nobody checked — every one is listed, with its row, before you save.
Buying twice after re-measuring — saving again replaces the room’s lines in your project and keeps the prices you gave them.

What the room planner does not do yet

Grout, ceiling paint, paint for woodwork, parquet adhesive, and the caulk and pins that finish trim — each is listed on the plan as not covered, rather than left out.
Sockets and lighting points. How many a room needs is set by the wiring rules where you are, and an electrician decides it.
Rooms that are not rectangles, and ceilings that slope. An L-shaped room can be planned as two rectangles for now.
The room next door. Thresholds and shared walls wait for rooms to be planned together.

Where the figures come from

Reading for the decisions

Questions

Why are some figures side by side instead of in the estimate?: They are different ways to finish the same surface. Tiles, a click floor, carpet and parquet are each worked out on your floor by their own calculator, with what goes with each, so they can be compared on your room. Only the way you choose becomes lines in your project, and choosing another swaps them.
Why does the joint tape change when the ceiling is boarded too?: The angle where the walls meet the ceiling is one joint. Boarding both gives one tape figure that counts it once, rather than a figure for the walls and another for the ceiling that would each count it.
Why does a row ask me something instead of using a default?: A few figures turn on something no measurement of the room can tell: how deep the floor has to be filled to come level, how many doorways meet a different floor, how much light your fittings give. A made-up default there would look like an answer, so the row asks, beside itself, and fills in as soon as you reply.
What happens if I only know how many doors there are, not their size?: A standard interior door stands in for each one — its size is shown under the door boxes, in your units — and everything resting on it is marked as assumed and drops to low confidence until you give the real size.
Does saving send my room anywhere?: No. The room is kept in this browser's own storage with the rest of your project, and nothing on this page makes a network request.

When the work is a job rather than a room. Plenty of it never starts from a space — a slab, a roof, a deck, a panel upgrade. Each of those is a job takeoff: give it the few figures that job is described by, and every trade in it comes back together, the way the room does here.

Room planner

The room

Everything the room needs

Paint for doors, frames and skirting

Skirting boards

Caulk, nails and adhesive for the trim

Sockets

Light level

Compared on this room

Walls: every way, side by side

Floor: every way, side by side

Assumptions assumed