How to Measure Stairs for Carpet | UK Guide | 2023

Carpeting your interiors can be a costly home improvement project. However, you can make a considerable saving by carrying out the work yourself. That being said, before you start thinking about putting down underlay and reaching for your hammer and carpet tacks, you will need to measure the space that needs surfacing to ensure you buying enough carpet. While measuring standard rooms is fairly easy, measuring stairs and landings is more difficult.

Start with the Landing

To make your life easy, you should kick off carpet measurement for stairs by taking stock of your landing space. Beginning at the top of the stars, measure all of the edges of your landing and draft a floor plan so you can work out landing area later. You can the move on to measuring the stairs themselves.

Measuring Steps

Thankfully, you do not have to measure each and every step individually. Instead, simply measure the width of your top step by its length. Then, multiply these two values to find out the area of the surface of the step. You will also need to work out the drop surface area for each step. To do this, multiply the width of each step by the height/drop of each step. Add these two surface area values together, then multiply that number by the overall number of steps your staircase is made up of.

Bottom Landings

Finally, you can think about measuring your bottom landing. Again, measure the edges of the space to draft a floor plan so you can work out the area of your landing. If you have an awkwardly shaped landing, you may need to overcompensate when calculating the amount of carpet you will need. Alternatively, you can use gridded paper to draft a more detailed plan that will provide you with a precise result.

Always Order Extra

To ensure you have enough carpet to resurface your landings and stairs, always order a little bit more carpet than your plan says you will need. Not only will this cover you in the event you have made an error when drafting your floor plan, it will also provide you with spare material should you damage any carpet when laying it. To learn more about upgrading other aspects of your home, check out our article covering the best garage doors on the market today!