Skirting Calculator

Skirting is measured in running feet — the length around the room, minus doorways. Enter your room, your skirting height, and the slab or tile it is being cut from. You get the running feet, the area, the pieces to cut, and how many slabs that comes to.

1Room

Measure along the base of the walls. If opposite walls differ, use the wall-by-wall option — it changes the piece count.

Length
ft
in
Width
ft
in

2Doors & openings

Skirting skips doorways. Measure the frame outside to outside, not the door leaf.

no.
ft
ft

Total width of wide openings, wardrobes and fixed kitchen units with no skirting behind them.

3Skirting size

4 inch (100 mm) is the usual height. Thickness is used for the weight figure only.

in
mm

4Cut from

Skirting is not sold in boxes — it is cut in strips off a slab or tile. The strip count decides how much you buy.

Length
cm
Width
cm
mm
mm

Kerf is the stone lost to each cut — 3–5 mm on a bridge saw. Edge trim is the squaring loss on a raw slab edge; set it to 0 for a finished tile.

ft

Length of one ready-cut strip as supplied. No slab yield is worked out in this mode.

5Allowances

Cutting waste is counted piece by piece below, so this covers breakage and colour rejects only.

%
mm
ft

Leave the cap at 0 to cut strips at full slab length. Cap it if long strips are awkward to handle or transport.

Your skirting requirement

Skirting length
Skirting area
Pieces to cut
Weight on the wall
Slabs to order
incl. breakage allowance

How to order: quote the running feet and the skirting height to your supplier — that is what a skirting rate is charged against. The slab figure is what you consume if the stone is bought as slab and cut to size. Rooms are rarely square, so confirm the perimeter on site before cutting.

Strips from one slab

Usable strip Kerf & edge trim Remainder, too narrow for a strip

Cut list, wall by wall

A strip cannot bend around a corner, so the last piece on every wall is a part piece. That is where the real waste sits — not in a flat percentage.

RunLengthPiecesLayoutOffcut

Square Feet / Square Meters

How do you calculate skirting quantity?

Add up the wall runs around the room, subtract the doorways, and you have the skirting length. For a 12 × 10 ft room with one 3.5 ft door that is 40.5 running feet. Multiply by the skirting height for the area — at 4 inch height, 13.5 sq ft.

Skirting length
2 × ( Length + Width ) − total door / opening width
Skirting area
Skirting length × Skirting height
Pieces per wall
round up ( wall run ÷ strip length )

That third line is the one most calculators skip. They divide the total length by the strip length once, which assumes you can carry the leftover from one wall onto the next. Sometimes you can. You cannot when the leftover is 200 mm and every wall needs a clean corner — so this calculator counts the pieces wall by wall and only reuses offcuts long enough to be worth handling.

Is skirting measured in running feet or square feet?

Running feet, in almost all Indian trade quotes. Skirting is a length of a fixed height, so a supplier quotes a rate per running foot at a stated height — 4 inch skirting at ₹X per running foot. Ask what height the rate assumes; the same rate at 6 inch height is a different amount of stone.

Square feet still matters in two places. If the skirting is cut from slab, the stone is billed by slab area consumed, not by the face area of the finished skirting. And when skirting is ordered alongside a floor, both are often totalled in square feet so they can be cut from the same batch. The calculator gives you both figures for that reason.

How many skirting strips can you cut from one slab?

Divide the usable slab width by the skirting height plus the blade kerf. A 160 cm wide slab trimmed 10 mm each edge leaves 158 cm of usable width; at 4 inch (101.6 mm) height with a 3 mm kerf, each strip consumes 104.6 mm, so you get 15 strips, each as long as the slab.

Strips per slab
round down ( ( slab width − 2 × edge trim ) ÷ ( height + kerf ) )

Two things follow from that. Skirting height changes your slab count in steps rather than smoothly — moving from 100 mm to 110 mm can cost you a whole strip off every slab. And kerf matters more than people expect: at 3 inch height, a 5 mm kerf costs you roughly one strip in every sixteen.

Slab width varies inside a batch, so check the narrowest slab rather than the average — one strip short per slab across a large order is a real shortfall. Stone Galleria LLP, a natural stone i.e., granite, sandstone, marble, quartzite and slate manufacturer and exporter in Rajasthan, processes at Kishangarh, Jalore and Pali, and supplies cut-to-size granite skirting and marble skirting to height. Enter the slab dimensions from your own quotation rather than the default, because the strip count is decided entirely by the width you actually receive.

What is the standard skirting height?

4 inch (100 mm) is the common default in Indian residential work. 3 inch (75 mm) reads lighter and suits small-format floors. 6 inch (150 mm) is used where ceilings run above about 10.5 ft, and in older buildings where a shorter skirting looks thin against the wall.

MaterialUsual heightUsual thicknessTypical breakage allowance
Granite skirting3–6 in (75–150 mm)16–20 mm5–10%
Marble skirting3–6 in (75–150 mm)16–20 mm8–15%
Sandstone4–6 in (100–150 mm)20–25 mm10–15%
Vitrified / ceramic tile3–4 in (75–100 mm)8–12 mm5–10%

Thickness does not change how many strips a slab yields — strips are cut across the slab width, not through its thickness. It changes the weight, which matters if the skirting is being shipped.

How much wastage should you add for skirting?

Split it in two, because the two halves behave differently. Cutting waste is geometric — the part piece at the end of each wall run, plus the kerf between strips. Both are counted exactly by this calculator, so adding a percentage on top would double-count them.

Breakage is what needs an allowance. Thin strips crack in handling and transport, and a strip whose shade or vein does not sit with its neighbours gets rejected on site. 5–10% covers most granite work; go higher for marble with strong veining, for strips under 16 mm, and for any job where the colour has to run continuously from room to room.

Cut all the skirting for a job from the same block at the same time, breakage allowance included. A replacement strip cut from a different block six months later will not match, and on a polished dark granite the join shows from across the room.

How do you calculate staircase skirting?

A staircase skirting run is longer than the stair looks, because it follows the sloped line of the treads and risers rather than the floor. For a straight flight, the run length is the diagonal: the square root of ( total going² + total rise² ), where going is tread depth × number of treads and rise is riser height × number of risers.

Straight flight skirting run
√ ( ( tread depth × treads )² + ( riser height × risers )² )

Work that out for each flight, then enter each flight as a separate run in the wall-by-wall mode above. Stair skirting is usually cut as a stepped profile rather than a sloped strip, which raises waste — allow 15–20% breakage rather than 8%, because every step is a separate mitred piece.

For the treads and risers themselves, use the staircase stone quantity calculator.

What this calculator does not cover

  • Curved walls and columns. Measure those separately and add each as its own run.
  • A door in the middle of a wall. It is treated as shortening the wall; in practice it splits the wall into two runs, each needing its own end piece, so the piece count can be one or two higher.
  • Adhesive, sealant, and pre-formed corner pieces.
  • Edge polishing cost, which is charged per running foot on the exposed top edge only.
  • Slab-to-slab width variation within a batch.

Use it to size an order and to check a contractor's quantity before approving it — not as a cutting instruction to the factory.

Frequently asked questions

How do you calculate skirting in running feet?

Add the length of every wall at floor level and subtract the width of each doorway. A 12 × 10 ft room with one 3.5 ft door gives 44 − 3.5 = 40.5 running feet. Height does not affect running feet — only the area and the amount of stone consumed.

Is skirting sold per running foot or per square foot?

Per running foot in most Indian quotes, at a stated height. Confirm the height the rate assumes — a 4 inch rate and a 6 inch rate are 50% apart in stone. If the skirting is cut from slab you buy, you are billed on the slab area consumed instead.

How many skirting pieces come from one granite slab?

Divide the usable slab width by the skirting height plus the blade kerf. A 260 × 160 cm slab at 4 inch height with a 3 mm kerf gives about 15 strips of 2.58 m each — roughly 127 running feet from one slab. Change the height and the count changes in whole strips, not fractions. If you would rather not cut it yourself, granite skirting is supplied ready-cut to height.

Do you deduct door openings from skirting length?

Yes. Skirting is not fixed across a doorway, so deduct the full frame width measured outside to outside, not the door leaf. On a typical room that is 5–8% of the perimeter, which is enough to matter on an order.

Can I use this for tile skirting?

Yes. Choose "Floor tile" as the source and enter the tile size — the calculator works out how many strips come off one tile and how many tiles you need. The arithmetic is the same as for stone; only the yield step changes, since a tile is smaller and gives fewer strips per piece.

How much does stone skirting weigh?

About 1.5 kg per running foot at 4 inch height and 18 mm thickness in granite, or roughly 5 kg per running metre. The calculator gives the figure for your own height, thickness and material. Use the granite weight calculator if you need the full consignment weight for freight.