How to work out the amount of tiles or slabs needed to cover a floor or wall space (math help).

There are basically two ways that you can use to work out how many tiles or slabs that you need to fit a rectangular floor/wall space:

Method 1 (this method works best for calculator questions):

Step 1. Work out the area of the floor and the area of the tile. Do this by multiplying the two sides together as the flooring area and tiles will be rectangular or square shaped.

Step 2.Once this is done divide the area of the floor by the area of the tile.

Method 2 (this method works best for non-calculator questions)

Step 1. Work out how many tiles you can fit along the length of the floor. Do this by dividing the length of the floor by the length of the tile.

Step 2. Work out how many tiles you can fit along the width of the floor. Do this by diving the width of the tile by the width of the floor.

Step 3. Multiply the answers from steps 1 and 2 to give the amount of tiles that fit the floor.

Example 1

Work out how many 20cm by 20cm square tiles will be needed to cover a floor that is 1.8m long and 80cm wide?

Method 1

Step 1:

Area of the floor = 180 × 80 = 14400 cm² (1.8m has been changed to 180cm so that all the units are the same).

Area of the tile = 20 × 20 = 400 cm²

Step 2:

14400 ÷ 400 = 36 tiles

Method 2

Step 1

The amount of tiles that fit along the length are:

180 ÷ 20 = 9

Step 2

The amount of tiles that fit along the width are:

80 ÷ 20 = 4

Step 3

So if you multiply these two answers together you get the amount of tiles that fit the floor:

9 × 4 = 36 tiles

Notice that both methods give the same amount of tiles.