Estimate baseboard, shoe, crown and chair rail in linear feet
This baseboard and trim calculator turns each room's walls into the linear feet of trim you actually have to buy — then into whole stock lengths ("sticks") and a material cost. Enter a room's length and width (or a direct perimeter for an irregular room), list its doors and cased openings, and pick which trim profiles run in that room. The tool does the perimeter math, subtracts openings where they belong, adds a waste allowance, and rounds up to whole sticks.
It handles a whole house at once: add every room, set one profile per trim type — one baseboard, one crown, one shoe, one chair rail — and the totals roll up across rooms before rounding, the way trim is really bought in bulk. Everything runs in your browser; nothing you type is sent anywhere.
The four trim types, and how each one is measured
Baseboard is the tall board where the wall meets the floor. Shoe (or quarter-round) is the thin strip that caps the gap between the baseboard and the finished floor. Crown runs where the wall meets the ceiling. Chair rail sits partway up the wall. Each is a linear run, but they don't all measure the same way.
Base, shoe and chair rail follow the floor perimeter, so a doorway removes its width from the run — the trim stops at each side of the opening. Crown follows the ceiling, which a doorway never interrupts, so crown is counted around the full, unbroken perimeter. The calculator applies this rule per trim type automatically; you just say which types run in each room.
All four trims in one room
Room layout
Floor trim (breaks at doors)Crown (full ceiling)
Base, shoe, crown and chair rail running in a 14 × 16 ft room, with each profile's cross-section shown below the plan.
The measuring formula
For a rectangular room the perimeter is twice the length plus the width. Floor-following trims subtract each opening's width; crown does not. The room totals are summed across the whole project, a waste allowance is added, and the result is divided by the stock length and rounded up — buying whole sticks, not fractional feet.
Every room reduces to these four steps, applied per trim type and summed across the project before rounding.
Floor trim — base, shoe, chair rail
floorLF = 2 × (Length + Width) − Σ(opening width × count)- Each door and cased opening subtracts its full width.
- In perimeter mode, enter the perimeter directly instead of L × W.
- Never goes below zero if openings exceed the perimeter.
Crown — the ceiling run
crownLF = 2 × (Length + Width)- Doors are never subtracted — crown runs the full, unbroken ceiling.
- This is the same base perimeter, before any opening comes out.
Stock lengths to buy
sticks = ceil( totalLF × (1 + waste%) ÷ stock length )- Room totals are summed first, then rounded once at the project level.
- Waste defaults to 10% (15% for crown) and is editable per type.
Material cost
cost = sticks × stock length × price/ft (or sticks × price/stick)- Cost is figured on whole sticks — the trim you actually carry home.
- Enter a per-foot or per-stick price; both resolve to the same spend.
Why crown is not reduced by doors
This is the single most common mistake in a trim takeoff. A doorway breaks the baseboard — the board physically stops at the casing on each side — so the door width comes out of the base, shoe and chair-rail runs. But the ceiling above that doorway is continuous, so crown molding runs straight across it. Subtracting doors from crown under-buys it.
In the diagram below, the floor-trim band breaks at the door while the crown ring runs unbroken all the way around. The calculator counts crown on the full ceiling perimeter and base/shoe/chair on the door-reduced floor perimeter, from the same room inputs.
Floor trim breaks at the door — crown does not
Room layout
Floor trim (breaks at doors)Crown (full ceiling)
A 12 × 14 ft room with one door: the floor-trim band opens at the doorway while the crown ring stays continuous around the full ceiling.
Inside vs. outside corners
A plain rectangular room has exactly four inside (concave) corners and no outside corners — that's a geometric fact, so in dimensions mode the calculator fills those counts in for you. Outside (convex) corners only appear when the room isn't a simple rectangle: an L-shape, a bump-out, or a peninsula wall. Enter those in perimeter mode.
Inside corners are usually coped — one piece is scribed to the other's profile so the joint stays tight even when the wall isn't a true 90°. Outside corners are mitered — two 45° cuts meeting at the point. Corner counts are informational here: they shape the diagram and tell you where coping and mitering happen, but the material allowance for those cuts is folded into the waste percentage rather than added as a separate quantity.
Inside vs. outside corners
Room layout
Corner markers distinguish coped inside corners from mitered outside corners — here an example with three inside and one outside corner.
Using the calculator, step by step
The tool is built around a room list and a set of project-wide trim types. Work through it in order:
From rooms to a shopping list
- Choose your units and currencyPick metric or imperial and your currency. Imperial (feet) is the default for the US-centric trim market; switching converts your entries.
- Add your roomsAdd a room for each space. Enter length × width for a rectangle, or switch to perimeter mode and type a direct perimeter for an L-shaped or bay room.
- List doors and openingsAdd each door or cased opening with its width and a count. Widths come out of base, shoe and chair rail — but never out of crown.
- Enable the trim types you're runningBase is on by default. Turn on shoe, crown or chair rail as needed, then use the per-room chips to opt a room out of a type — crown in only the living room, say.
- Set stock length, waste and priceFor each trim type, confirm the stock length, tune the waste percentage, and add a price per foot or per stick to cost the job.
- Read the takeoffThe rail shows linear feet, whole sticks and cost per trim type plus a grand total. Export the per-room takeoff to CSV or print it for the supplier.
Stock lengths and waste, and why we round to whole sticks
Trim is sold in fixed lengths, not by the foot: baseboard, shoe and chair rail are most commonly stocked in 8 ft lengths, and MDF crown in 12 ft. You buy whole sticks and cut them on site, so the honest number is the count of sticks — which is why the calculator rounds the waste-adjusted linear feet up to the next whole stick and prices what you actually carry to the till.
Waste covers miter and cope offcuts, practice cuts and the odd mistake. The defaults are 10% for straight-cut runs and 15% for crown, whose compound miters and coped returns burn more material. Bump the percentage up for stain-grade material (grain and color matching waste more) or a room with many corners; drop it for a simple paint-grade rectangle.
Worked examples
Two quick takeoffs — a single room's baseboard, then crown across a full ceiling — show exactly how the linear feet, waste, sticks and cost fit together.
Two takeoffs, using the calculator's default 8 ft base / 12 ft crown sticks and 10% / 15% waste.
One room's baseboard
floor trim- Given
- Living room, 14 × 16 ft
- One 3 ft door and one 5 ft cased opening
- Baseboard: 8 ft sticks, 10% waste, $2.00/ft
- Formula
sticks = ceil( floorLF × 1.10 ÷ 8 )- Steps
- Perimeter = 2 × (14 + 16) = 60 ft
- Floor perimeter = 60 − (3 + 5) = 52 ft
- With waste: 52 × 1.10 = 57.2 ft
- Sticks: 57.2 ÷ 8 = 7.15 → round up to 8
- Cost: 8 sticks × 8 ft × $2.00 = $128
- Result
- 8 sticks of baseboard — about $128
Crown across the same ceiling
crown — full perimeter- Given
- Same living room, 14 × 16 ft (60 ft perimeter)
- The 3 ft door and 5 ft opening are ignored for crown
- Crown: 12 ft sticks, 15% waste, $6.00/ft
- Formula
crownLF = full ceiling perimeter (no subtraction)- Steps
- Crown run = 60 ft — the openings do not come out
- With waste: 60 × 1.15 = 69 ft
- Sticks: 69 ÷ 12 = 5.75 → round up to 6
- Cost: 6 sticks × 12 ft × $6.00 = $432
- Result
- 6 sticks of crown — counted on the full 60 ft ceiling, not the door-reduced 52 ft
Perimeter mode: the unrolled elevation
Room layout
When a room is entered as a direct perimeter, the plan can't be drawn, so the trim run is shown unrolled as a straight band with schematic door gaps and corner ticks.
Common mistakes to avoid
Subtracting doorways from crown (it runs the full ceiling), rounding each room to whole sticks separately instead of summing first, forgetting the waste allowance on miter-heavy rooms, and pricing raw linear feet instead of the whole sticks you actually buy — these are the four errors that throw a trim estimate off. This calculator avoids all four by design.
Frequently asked questions
The details that come up most often when estimating trim.
How much waste should I add for baseboard and trim?
10% is the standard allowance for straight-cut runs like baseboard, shoe and chair rail, covering miter offcuts and the occasional bad cut. Crown deserves about 15% because its compound miters and coped returns waste more. Add roughly 5 more points for stain-grade material, where you're also matching grain and color, or for a room with lots of corners. The calculator seeds these defaults per trim type and lets you edit each one.
What stock lengths does trim come in?
Baseboard, shoe/quarter-round and chair rail are most widely stocked in 8 ft lengths; MDF crown is usually 12 ft, with 16 ft available. Longer pieces often need special freight, which is why 8 ft is the DIY default. The stock length is editable per trim type, so if your supplier quoted 16 ft crown you can just type it.
Do I subtract doors and openings when measuring crown?
No. Crown runs along the ceiling, and the ceiling is continuous over a doorway, so crown is measured around the full room perimeter with nothing subtracted. Only floor-level trims — base, shoe and chair rail — lose the width of each door or cased opening. The calculator applies this automatically, so crown is never accidentally under-bought.
What's the difference between inside and outside corners?
Inside (concave) corners are the four corners of a normal rectangular room; they're usually coped for a tight joint. Outside (convex) corners stick out — an L-shaped room, a bump-out or a peninsula — and are mitered at 45°. A simple rectangle has four inside and zero outside corners; the calculator fills that in automatically in dimensions mode and lets you set both counts in perimeter mode.
Should I price trim per foot or per stick?
Both are supported per trim type. Retailers usually quote a per-linear-foot price for comparison, so that's the default, but the physical product is a fixed-length stick with a shelf price. Whichever you enter, the cost is always figured on the whole sticks you actually buy, so per-foot and per-stick pricing stay consistent with each other.
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