Linear Feet to Square Feet

How to Convert Linear Feet to Square Feet

When ordering or installing many types of material, you may find that some are sold by the linear foot and some by the square foot. And some of these materials may even be designed to be used together.

Before doing any calculations, it’s important to understand what linear feet and square feet are. Linear footage is a measure of length or distance, while square footage is a measure of area.

Because these are different types of measure, some additional information will be needed to convert between the two. For the calculator above, the material width is used in conjunction with the length to calculate the area.

To convert linear footage to square footage, use the following area formula:

area = length × width

To use the formula, insert the linear feet measurement for length and material width for the width. If you’re stuck on how to find this, learn more about how to find linear feet.

For example, let’s find how many square feet of a flooring border you’ll need for a 6″ wide border measuring 12 linear feet.

Start by converting the width measurement to feet so we have common units of measure.

Now use the area formula to convert to square feet.

So, if you wanted to subtract the square footage of the border from the rest of the flooring, you would subtract 6 square feet from the total area.

How to Convert Square Feet to Linear Feet

To find the length of a material in linear feet needed to cover a space with a measurement in square footage, you need to reverse the area formula above to solve for length. Start by converting the material width to feet if it’s in inches. Then, use this formula to convert to linear feet.

length = area ÷ width

For example, if you were using 3 x 6 tiles as a border, and there are 8 square feet in a box, 8 square feet divided by the width of the material (6″) gives us 16 linear feet of 3 x 6 tile in one box.

If you’re unsure how to find the area of a space, try using our square footage calculator.

For example, let’s find how many linear feet of hardwood flooring will be needed to cover a 120 sq. ft. room if the boards are 3″ wide.

Convert the width measurement to feet.

Now convert to linear feet.