Baseboard & Trim Calculator
Linear feet of baseboard with miter waste, by room size.
Each doorway subtracts about 3 ft of baseboard.
You need
42 linear ft
Waste for miter cuts included.
- 16 ft pieces
- 3 pieces
- 8 ft pieces
- 6 pieces
- Wall length to trim
- 38 linear ft
Estimates only. Verify quantities before ordering.
How this is calculated
Perimeter = 2 x (length + width). Net trim = perimeter minus 3 ft per doorway, plus your waste percentage. Piece counts divide the total by 8 ft or 16 ft stock lengths and round up.
Enter the room's dimensions and the number of doorways, and this calculator returns the linear feet of baseboard to buy plus how that translates into standard 8 ft and 16 ft lengths. Doorways subtract about 3 feet each, which covers the typical cased opening.
The waste factor covers miters. Every inside and outside corner consumes a few inches, upside-down cuts happen to everyone, and short offcuts under 2 feet are rarely reusable. 10% is right for a simple rectangular room; bump it up for rooms with many corners, or when running a pattern-matched profile that constrains which ends can join.
Baseboard for common room sizes
Rows assume two doorways and 10% miter waste.
| Room size | Linear ft | 16 ft pieces |
|---|---|---|
| 10 x 10 ft | 38 linear ft | 3 pieces |
| 12 x 10 ft | 42 linear ft | 3 pieces |
| 12 x 12 ft | 47 linear ft | 3 pieces |
| 15 x 12 ft | 53 linear ft | 4 pieces |
| 20 x 15 ft | 68 linear ft | 5 pieces |
MDF, pine, or poplar
MDF baseboard is the cheapest and the most dimensionally stable, arriving primed, dead straight, and with a smooth face that paints beautifully. Its weaknesses are water and impact: a wet mop or a plumbing leak swells the bottom edge permanently, and a vacuum cleaner corner dents it. In bathrooms, laundries, and basements, that is a real consideration.
Finger-jointed pine is the usual paint-grade wood alternative, slightly more expensive and far more tolerant of moisture and knocks. Poplar is the choice for painted trim where you want a hardwood that machines cleanly and holds a crisp profile. For stain-grade work, you are buying solid oak, maple, or whatever matches your doors, at a substantial jump in price and with the requirement that boards be sorted for grain and color.
Whatever the material, let it acclimate in the room for a few days before installing. Trim brought straight from a cold truck into a heated house shrinks after it is nailed up, and the gaps open at the miters where they are most visible.
Buying by the stick, not the linear foot
Baseboard is sold in fixed lengths, commonly 8, 12, 14, and 16 feet, and the useful question is not how many linear feet you need but how those lengths map onto your walls. A 13 foot wall run from a 14 foot stick leaves a foot of waste and a clean, unbroken wall; the same run made from two 8 foot pieces leaves a scarf joint that will always be slightly visible.
Work wall by wall. List each run, assign the shortest stock length that covers it in one piece, and only accept a joint on runs longer than the longest length your supplier stocks. This produces a bigger raw material figure than a straight linear foot total and a better finished result, and it is why professional takeoffs are done this way.
Add roughly 10 to 15 percent over the raw length for miscuts and for the fact that every outside corner consumes extra on both pieces. If your walls are long, check that the lengths you buy will physically fit through your doors and around your stairwell before ordering 16 footers.
Coping inside corners, mitering outside ones
Inside corners should be coped rather than mitered. One piece butts into the corner, and the second is cut to the profile of the first with a coping saw so it laps over it. Coped joints stay tight when the wood moves and when the corner is not exactly 90 degrees, which almost none are. A mitered inside corner opens into a visible wedge within a season in most houses.
Outside corners are mitered, and the reliable method is to cut them slightly long, test fit, and trim rather than trusting the wall to be square. A digital angle finder pays for itself here: measure the actual corner angle, halve it, and set the saw to that instead of assuming 45 degrees. Glue outside miters and pin them from both directions so the joint cannot open.
Nail into the studs where you can, and into the bottom plate along the length of the wall where you cannot. Scribing or caulking the top edge covers the gap on a wavy wall, but a base that follows a dip in the floor looks better than one shimmed level over an uneven floor, since the eye reads the gap at the bottom more readily than the line at the top. For measuring linear feet across a whole room or house, see our guide on how much baseboard you need.
Common questions
Should I buy 8 ft or 16 ft baseboard?
Longer stock means fewer joints. If a wall is under 16 feet, a single 16 ft piece trims it with no seam. Use 8 ft pieces for short walls and closets where they cut efficiently. Where two pieces must meet mid-wall, join them with an angled scarf joint over a stud, not a butt joint.
How do I measure a room for baseboard?
Measure each wall at floor level and add them up, subtracting door openings. For a quick estimate, the room's perimeter minus 3 feet per doorway is close enough, which is exactly what this calculator does. Always round wall measurements up to the next half foot.
Do inside corners get mitered or coped?
Coping beats mitering for inside corners: one piece runs square into the corner and the other is cut to fit its profile. Coped joints stay tight when the wood shrinks and the walls are out of square, which they always are. Outside corners are mitered.
MDF or wood baseboard?
Primed MDF is cheaper, straight, and paints beautifully, which makes it the default for painted trim in dry rooms. Use real wood or PVC in bathrooms and anywhere moisture is possible, since MDF swells permanently when it gets wet, and use wood when you want a stained finish.
How many linear feet of baseboard for a 2,000 sq ft house?
There is no single number, because it depends on how the square footage is split into rooms: more, smaller rooms mean more wall and more baseboard than one open space of the same area. As a rough planning figure, a 2,000 square foot house runs about 350 to 450 linear feet of baseboard, toward the low end for open floor plans and the high end for many small rooms. For an accurate count, total each room separately with the calculator above rather than trusting a whole-house rule of thumb.