Before you start using the square footage calculator, it may help to know what a square foot is. A square foot is an imperial measurement used in Canada, US, UK, and China.
On paper, you would see a square foot written as ‘⏍,’ which is a square with a line bisecting it. The square foot symbol is commonplace in architecture, interior design, and real estate. Along with the symbol, square foot also appears as ‘sq ft’ and ‘sqft.’
In most cases, you can make quick calculations using a square footage calculator. If you don’t have access to it for some reason, there’s another way to calculate the measurement.
A square foot is the area of a square with a side equal to one-foot in length. If you were talking about everyday objects, such a connection could be helpful. You could say that an A4 piece of copy paper is 0.65 square feet, or that the average room in a house is 100 square feet.
Many people use square feet for measuring area, but square inches have their place as well. Square inches are more suitable for small objects. In other parts of the world, metric units like square meter are more common.
When are you going to come across a situation where you need to calculate the square feet of an area? A square footage calculator will be useful to build a house, paint it, or buy and sell property. You can then use it to convert square meters to square feet or square feet to inches.
If you have an area measurement, but it’s not in square feet, then how do you convert it? Use a square footage calculator to complete the task. Follow these steps below:
1. Locate the area tab in the calculator and select the units from which to convert
2. Enter the value of the area in the units you have
3. Select ‘square feet’ or sq ft on the unit switcher
4. Read what the square footage calculator shows!
Using these same steps, you can also convert from square feet to another unit of measurement.
Do you want to know how to convert sqm to sqft? Believe it or not, the process is quite straightforward. In this example, we want to turn a 200 square-meter swimming pool into square feet.
200 sqm x 10.764 sq ft / sqm = 2152.78 sq ft
Look back at the process of converting square meters to square feet. Turning square inches or square feet to acres, or vice versa is the same. Find out how many square feet are in one acre below.
1 acre x 43,560 sq ft / acre = 43 560 sq ft
30 square inches x 0.00694 sq ft / sq in = 0.208333 sq ft
This formula is flexible in that you can work it out in reverse. You can find square footage from acres and any number of units from a square footage measurement.
As you can see, there are six fields in the square footage calculator to enter your data. Four exist in the simple mode and two more exist in advanced.
Four in the simple mode are:
Width = the measurement of one rectangular side
Length = the measurement of another rectangular side in the area
Quantity = the number of spaces or rooms within the outer dimensions
Area = the combined square footage
Two in the advanced mode are:
Unit price = the price per square foot
Total cost = the entire collective price
With so many fields for information, you might think a square footage calculator is hard to use. However, you just have to enter the information you have, and the calculator works out the rest. You can use it for knowing the total square footage of space and the costs associated with it.
The square footage formula is another name for area formula. You use it to work out the area of a space. The method can differ depending on the object for which you are calculating the area.
The most common shapes to calculate the area of are rectangles and squares. For this equation, you multiply the lengths of the sides in square feet measurements.
The square footage = length A x length B
This straightforward mathematical formula is common for measuring a property's square footage. It can be as easy as measuring two sides in square feet measurements then multiplying them by each other.
It may also interest you to know the square footage formula is the same as a rectangle area formula. Instead of calculating a polygon, you’re finding square footage measurements. It then offers you these in square meters, acres, square feet, and more.
You can also use a square footage calculator even if the room is not quite square. Instead of the measurement being exact, it becomes an estimate. A circle or triangle area calculator might provide a more exact answer.
If you want to know the value of a property or the materials within it, use this square footage calculator. The calculator will divide the total price by the square footage to work out the cost per square-foot. Such a calculation is common when working out rental costs, office leases, and the cost of carpet.
From here, tap into the advanced mode of the square footage calculator to make use of the pricing feature. You now have access to the four simple fields plus the unit price and total cost fields. Here is how to determine square footage pricing step by step.
1. Input the property’s width and length measurements
2. Add the number of rooms into the quantity field
3. Add any other data you have
4. Click the ‘advanced mode’ button
5. Add your property’s total pricing
6. Let the calculator work its magic!
The example above is a simple scenario for the square footage calculator's use, but it’s a common one. It can help you calculate square footage as well as putting a monetary value to the measurements.
Square-foot pricing is an excellent way to compare property pricing with size. If you have two different houses, you can identify the best square foot value.
You can use a square footage calculator to work out the average room square footage. However, not every house area is going to be exactly square. After all, homes are becoming more unique by the day. In the case of a complicated or irregular shape, you have two options.
You can:
1. Use a hexagon, octagon, or polygon calculator
2. Deconstruct the irregular shape into smaller, regular shapes for easier calculation
With option two, measure the square footage of each component, and then add all the results together. If you come across a house with curved walls that may be hard to measure, you can use this method for approximation.
There are only a few countries still using the Imperial system. The rest of the world uses a metric system with meters, centimeters, and millimeters. Using square feet is natural to you, but it's not to people outside North America. Thus, it won’t hurt to make quick conversions in your head so you can understand both square meters and square feet.
A rough conversion formula to remember in your head is that ten square feet = one square meter. You add a zero to the end of the number.
30 square feet = 322 square meters
It’s not precise, but it points you in the right direction.
A final noteworthy point is the use of the board foot measurement. The board foot is not a unit of area, but rather of volume. You can’t convert board feet to area measurements, but you can turn them into volume measurements.