Area, tile size and laying pattern in. Tile count with the right wastage, adhesive bags and a grout estimate out. Free, no email.
Straight laying uses a 10% wastage allowance, the standard allowance for cuts, breakage and a few spares for future repairs.
62 tiles
600 x 600mm over 20 m², straight pattern, 10% wastage included
That is 2.8 tiles per m² before wastage. Boxes of 600 x 600 typically cover about 1.44 m² (4 tiles), so roughly 16 boxes, but check the box coverage, they vary.
4 x 20kg bags
Adhesive at roughly 3.5 kg/m² with a standard notched trowel. Bigger notches, uneven substrates and back-buttering large tiles push it up.
10 to 16 kg grout
Rough range for 600 x 600mm tiles. Smaller tiles mean more joints and more grout, wider joints and thicker tiles push it toward the high end.
Guide only. Real quantities depend on the room shape, joint width, tile thickness, substrate and the tiler's setout. Order from the supplier's box coverage and keep spares from the same batch, dye lots change between production runs.
Every tiler has watched a job stall because the client ordered the exact area and nothing more. Then a tile snaps on the wet saw, the herringbone eats the offcuts, and the top-up order arrives in a different batch that never quite matches. The wastage percentage is not padding, it is the difference between finishing Friday and finishing Tuesday.
Pick your pattern and the calculator applies the allowance that pattern actually needs, 10% straight through to 17.5% herringbone. It adds the adhesive bags at 3.5 kg per m² and a grout range for your tile size, so one pass gives you the whole supply run.
Divide 1 by the tile area in square metres. A 600 x 600 tile is 0.36 m², so 2.8 tiles per m². A 300 x 300 is 11.1 per m², and a 100 x 300 subway is 33.3 per m². Then add wastage on top, which is where most people come up short.
10% for a straight lay is the standard, covering cuts, breakage and a few spares for future repairs. Diagonal laying needs about 15% because every edge tile gets an angled cut. Herringbone is the hungriest at around 17.5%. Ordering the exact area and nothing more almost always ends with a trip back to the supplier, and the new batch rarely matches the old dye lot.
A common working figure is about 3.5 kg per m² with a standard notched trowel, which is roughly one 20kg bag per 5 to 6 m². Large format tiles that need back-buttering, bigger trowel notches and uneven substrates all push usage up, so round up rather than down.
No. This gets you in the right ballpark for ordering and budgeting. The tiler's setout decides where the cuts fall, and the box label decides the real coverage, which varies between brands and even between batches. Use this to sanity-check a quote or plan a supply run, then order from the actual box coverage.
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