Guide · Takeoff

How to do an engineered timber flooring takeoff from plans

An engineered timber estimate starts like any hard floor: rooms, allowances, waste and whole cartons. What changes is everything around the boards: floating and direct stick need different materials, herringbone needs far more waste, and the expansion gap has to be covered. This guide works through a full takeoff from a plan, in metric, with a note for square feet.

Floating or direct stick: settle it first

The selections name the range, but not always the install method, and many engineered boards can go down either way: one 14 mm oak range from Flooring Works is sold for floating or for gluing direct to the slab. Ask if the selections do not say:

Floating. The boards click together over an underlay. Kustom Timber's installation guide asks for a 200 µm moisture vapour layer under a floating floor on a slab, either built into the foam underlay or as separate 200 µm polyethylene, overlapped about 200 mm, taped, and brought up at the walls. Price underlay, and film where needed, on the floor area.
Direct stick. The boards are glued to the slab with a polyurethane or polymer timber flooring adhesive, spread as a full trowel bed with the trowel the adhesive maker specifies. Kustom Timber notes the moisture protection then usually comes from an applied moisture vapour barrier, and that the barrier, any levelling compound and the adhesive should be compatible, usually from the same manufacturer. Price adhesive and barrier on the floor area, plus any extra preparation for a flatter slab.

Write the method on the quote, because a change later moves both the materials and the rate.

1. Measure the floor area from the plan

Take sizes from the printed dimension strings, never by scaling the PDF, and split open plan spaces into rectangles that add up to the whole. Then add the floor the rectangles miss: a strip across each doorway, commonly 10 cm deep, the floor under the kickboard, and appliance recesses. The floor area from plans guide covers the measuring, and the robes, recesses and kickboards guide covers the allowances.

2. Choose waste by layout

Timber waste depends far more on the layout than on the house. Havwoods suggests these allowances:

Layout	Under 100 m²	Over 100 m²
Straight plank	10%	7%
Herringbone and chevron	15%	12%

Kustom Timber's guide asks for 10% on average and 25% on all parquetry, so check the guidance for the range you are quoting, and keep your own figure once your installers have proved it over a few jobs. The waste percentage guide explains the order: add waste once, to the total, then round up.

3. Round up to full cartons

Engineered timber is sold in cartons with the coverage printed on the label. The Flooring Works oak ranges mentioned above come in cartons of 2.166 m², while their 600 × 120 mm herringbone blocks come in cartons of 0.864 m². Divide the area with waste by the carton coverage and round up to a whole carton. Do it once, on the total, not room by room, as the hybrid flooring calculator shows: the arithmetic is the same for any floor sold in packs.

4. Measure the perimeter for scotia or skirting

A floating timber floor needs room to move. Kustom Timber asks for at least 10 mm at the perimeter and at any other vertical surface, covered by skirting or scotia that is fixed to the wall, never to the floor. If the skirting stays, you are pricing scotia. Scotia is commonly sold in 2.4 m lengths, with some timber profiles at 2.5 m. To measure it:

add up the wall lengths of each timber room, leaving out any edge where two timber rooms open into each other;
take off every doorway and sliding door, and any wall behind cabinets where the kickboard covers the edge;
add an allowance for joins and mitres, then round up to whole lengths.

If new skirting goes in after the floor, the skirting covers the gap and no scotia is needed. Say which one you have priced.

5. Count trims and expansion joints

Price a trim wherever the timber meets another floor, stops at a sliding door frame, or ends at an exposed edge, as the trims and transitions guide explains. Timber adds expansion joints inside the floor. Kustom Timber asks for intermediate expansion joints where a floor is wider than 8 m or longer than 10 m, and for floating floors it places control joints at doorways and at the end of hallways. Limits differ by product: the Flooring Works range above lists a raft of 8 × 12 m floating and 10 × 20 m direct stick before an expansion gap. Check the guide for the selected range, then look for long runs, such as a hall that runs straight into the living area.

6. Stairs

Timber stairs are measured per step, with a stair allowance before the normal waste, and nosing priced per step. Matching nosings come in fixed lengths that vary by range, so a step wider than one nosing needs two pieces. The stairs guide works through treads, risers, landings and box steps; the method is the same for engineered timber.

A worked example

Example only

The rooms, underlay roll, adhesive coverage and join allowance are made up to show the method. The 2.166 m² carton is a real carton size, and the waste figure is the Havwoods straight plank allowance. Use the figures for the product you are quoting.

A plan has engineered timber, straight lay, in an open plan living and dining area and the hall. Three bedroom doors and the laundry door off the hall change to carpet or tiles, and a 2410 mm sliding door opens from the living area to the alfresco. The hall opens into the living area along its 1.1 m end.

Space	Size (m)	Area (m²)
Living and dining	6.2 × 7.4	45.88
Hall	1.1 × 4.8	5.28
Rooms		51.16
Doorway strips, 5.69 m of openings × 0.1 m		0.57
Floor to cover		51.73

Item	Working	Order
Boards, 10% waste	51.73 × 1.10 = 56.90 m², ÷ 2.166 m² cartons = 26.27	27 cartons (58.48 m²)
Perimeter	Walls 27.2 m (living) + 11.8 m (hall) − 2.2 m where they join = 36.8 m, less four 820 doors and the 2410 sliding door (5.69 m)	31.11 m
Scotia, 10% for joins	31.11 × 1.10 = 34.22 m, ÷ 2.4 m lengths = 14.26	15 lengths
Trims	Four doors and the sliding door, plus a control joint where the hall meets the living area (with the boards running down the hall, the 4.8 m hall and 7.4 m living area make a 12.2 m run)	6 trims
Floating: underlay with built-in 200 µm film	51.73 m² ÷ 15 m² rolls = 3.45	4 rolls
Floating: separate 200 µm film, if the underlay has none	51.73 m² + 10% for overlaps and turn-ups	56.90 m²
Direct stick: moisture barrier	Two coats at 3.0 m² per litre per coat (Ardex WPM 300's published rate) = 51.73 ÷ 1.5 = 34.49 L	2 × 20 L
Direct stick: adhesive	51.73 m² ÷ 12 m² per pail = 4.31	5 pails

The 27 cartons cover 58.48 m², which leaves 1.58 m² over the 56.90 m² needed with waste. The floating and direct stick lines are alternatives: price one set, not both. In practice, use the barrier from the same system as your adhesive.

The same floor laid in herringbone shows why layout matters. At Havwoods' 15%, 51.73 m² becomes 59.49 m², which is 69 cartons of 0.864 m² (59.62 m²). That is 2.59 m² more allowed for waste, although the smaller cartons round up closely, so the order is only about 1.1 m² more than the straight lay.

Solid timber is sold by the lineal metre

Solid boards are usually sold by the lineal metre in Australian timber yards. Divide the area by the cover width in metres, the face you see once the boards are joined, which is a little less than the nominal width. At a cover width of 0.125 m (an example figure), each square metre takes 8 lineal metres, so 20 m² is 160 lm before waste. Sanding and coating are priced separately, per m².

Things a plan does not tell you

A takeoff fixes the quantities, not the site, so state your assumptions and make the price subject to a check measure:

Moisture. Kustom Timber asks for a slab below 4% moisture content by impedance meter, or below 85% in-slab relative humidity, before installing, and for concrete to have been completed at least 90 days before delivery.
Flatness. For boards glued direct to a slab, Kustom Timber asks for less than 3 mm deviation under a 3 m straight edge. Grinding and levelling are priced per m² once you know.
Acclimatisation. Follow the manufacturer. Kustom Timber asks for the unopened cartons to sit in the installation environment for at least 48 hours, which affects when you can deliver and start.

The takeoff versus measure-up guide explains how to word the quote around these.

Feet and square feet

In the US and Canada, engineered hardwood is sold by the carton with the coverage in square feet, and the method is the same: total the area, add waste, divide by the carton coverage and round up. One square metre is 10.764 sq ft, so the 51.73 m² floor above is about 556.8 sq ft and a 2.166 m² carton is about 23.3 sq ft. Scotia is usually called quarter round or shoe moulding there. Squaro reads plans dimensioned in millimetres or metres today; plans in feet and inches are on the roadmap.

How Squaro handles an engineered timber takeoff

Squaro reads the working drawings and the selections and measures each room from the printed dimensions. In your price list, Engineered timber (floating) and Engineered timber (direct stick) are separate product types, sold in packs with their own waste figure, and the quote rounds up to full packs. Trims, scotia, nosing and adhesive are priced from your own price list at your rates. Every line shows where it came from, and you check every line before the quote goes out. Squaro does not plan herringbone layouts or produce cut plans. See flooring takeoff software.

Sources

Havwoods: everything you need to know about wastage, checked 6 October 2026.
Kustom Timber installation guide (PDF), checked 6 October 2026.
Flooring Works: 14 mm engineered oak product page, checked 6 October 2026.
Flooring Works: 15/4 mm herringbone engineered oak product page, checked 6 October 2026.
The Flooring Guys: scotia and stair nosing lengths, checked 6 October 2026.
H2O Supplies: Ardex WPM 300 coverage, checked 6 October 2026.
Canterbury Timbers: blackbutt flooring sold per metre, checked 6 October 2026.

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