EstimatorKitFree linear feet calculator
Linear feet, then the sticks that actually come home
Linear feet count length only — a run of 8 ft is eight of them whether the piece is a 1 by 2 or a 2 by 12. Add your runs in feet and inches, take a perimeter off a rectangle, or divide a coverage area by the width a board really covers, and this hands back the total plus the part that decides the order: how many 8 to 24 ft sticks that becomes, how much is left over, and the larger count for runs that must arrive in one piece.
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- Three ways in
- 8 to 24 ft stock
- Offcut named
Wall by wall, rail by rail — the way a take-off is actually written.
Name each one the way you would call it out on site. The names come back in the copied list, and a counter hand reads “end walls” faster than “Run 2”.
Base, casing, crown, decking, handrail and gutter come off this rack — 8 ft to 16 ft.
Add the price your yard quoted per foot
Yours, not ours — the point of typing it here is to see the gap between the feet you use and the feet you pay for.
Length to cover, before anything is bought
46.2 linear ft
- On a tape
- 46' 2"
- With 10% for cuts
- 50.8 ft
Cut anywhere: 4 sticks of 16 ft
That buys 64 ft to place 50.8, so 13.2 ft goes home in the truck. Switching to 14 ft sticks cuts the leftover to 5.22 ft across 4 pieces.
A stick for every run: 6 sticks
That is 2 more than the split above, because a run cannot be assembled from two shorter pieces without a visible joint. It buys 64 ft and leaves 17.8 ft.
- Long wall at 16' 4"1 × 16 ft + 8 ft, 7.67 ft off each
- End walls ×2 at 11' 9"2 × 12 ft, 0.25 ft off each
- Return by the hearth ×2 at 3' 2"2 × 8 ft, 4.83 ft off each
Nothing on this rack covers 16' 4" in one piece, so those runs are shown as a full-length stick plus the shortest one that reaches the tail — cheaper than a second full stick and the same single joint. Put that joint over a stud or a post, cut both halves at 45 degrees so the overlap hides the seasonal gap, and glue it.
| Stick | Pieces | Feet bought | Left over |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8 ft | 7 | 56 | 5.22 ft |
| 10 ft | 6 | 60 | 9.22 ft |
| 12 ft | 5 | 60 | 9.22 ft |
| 14 ft | 4 | 56 | 5.22 ft |
| 16 ft | 4 | 64 | 13.2 ft |
The 10% sits on top of the measured 46.2 ft rather than inside it, and the leftover in the table is a separate thing again: one is material you destroy, the other is material the rack forces you to take. Only the first is worth arguing about with a quote.
Coverage assumes every board runs full width. Where a run is fed by the offcut of the one before it — a picket fence, a run of decking with a butt joint over a joist — the true figure lands between the two counts above, and closer to the lower one the longer the runs are. A 5.75 in effective width is what puts 2.09 ft of board into every square foot of deck.
How to work out linear feet and turn them into an order
Measure the run, pick the rack, then read the two stick counts that are both correct.
Choose how the length reaches you
Three ways, because a take-off arrives in three shapes. A list of runs is the site version: one line per wall, rail or riser, with a count for the ones that repeat. Perimeter suits a fence, a yard or a room's baseboard, and takes the gates and doorways back off the total. Area-to-cover is for decking, siding and shiplap, where what you have is a square footage and what you need is feet of board.
Say which rack the material comes off
Trim, decking, handrail and gutter stop at 16 ft. Dimensional lumber carries on to 24 ft, and every length on either rack is even, which is the whole reason a 13 ft piece costs the same as a 14 ft one. Picking the rack sets the ladder that both stick counts are worked against, and the table underneath prices every length on it so you can see whether 12s or 16s waste less on your particular run.
Read both counts before you order
The first is the run divided across sticks, which is right when a joint may fall anywhere — a fence rail behind a picket, a course of decking butted over a joist. The second gives every run its own uncut piece, which is right when a joint would show: baseboard along a wall, a handrail, a fascia. The second is never smaller and is often several sticks larger. Order against whichever one describes your joints.
Technical specifications
| Linear foot | A foot measured along the piece, width and thickness excluded — the lineal foot on an invoice is the same unit |
|---|---|
| Trim rack | 8, 10, 12, 14 and 16 ft, the lengths base, casing, crown, decking, handrail and gutter are stocked in |
| Lumber rack | 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20 and 24 ft, all even, which is why a 13 ft piece is bought as a 14 |
| Coverage default | 5.5 in face plus a 1/4 in gap covers 5.75 in, so one square foot of deck takes 2.09 ft of board |
| Runs per list | Up to 24 named runs, each with a repeat count, typed as feet-inches, a fraction, a decimal or metric |
| Two stick counts | Cut-anywhere against one-piece-per-run — five 9 ft walls are 3 sticks by the first and 5 by the second |
| Cutting allowance | 10% for miters and mis-cuts by default, printed beside the measured run instead of inside it |
| Leaves the browser | Nothing — both stock ladders compile into the page, so the stick count still works in a yard with no signal |
Frequently asked questions
What is a linear foot, and is a lineal foot something different?
A linear foot is one foot measured along the piece, with its width and thickness left out entirely, and lineal foot is the same unit under an older spelling that invoices and lumber yards still use. Nothing is implied about the section: an 8 ft length of 1 by 2 and an 8 ft length of 2 by 12 are both eight linear feet. That is why a price per linear foot only compares two quotes when the profile is identical, and why a quote for a countertop or a cabinet run at a rate per linear foot has a fixed depth baked silently into the rate.
How do I convert square feet into linear feet?
Divide the area by the width one board actually covers, then keep the units straight: linear feet equals square feet times twelve, divided by the coverage width in inches. A nominal 6 in deck board is 5.5 in wide and is laid with about a 1/4 in gap, so it covers 5.75 in and a square foot of deck takes 2.09 ft of board. The conversion only exists because a width was supplied — there is no general formula between an area and a length, which is why a calculator that offers one without asking for a width is answering a different question.
Do deck boards really only cover 5 3/4 inches each?
Yes, and both halves of that number matter. A nominal 6 in board is dressed to 5.5 in under PS 20, whether it is 5/4 radius-edge decking, a 2 by 6 or a 1 by 6 fence board. The gap between boards adds the rest: about a quarter inch, so water and leaf litter fall through rather than sitting on the joist and rotting it. Boards installed soaking wet — most treated stock is — will shrink apart from a tight fit, so laying them touching and letting them open is a legitimate alternative to gapping them, and it changes the coverage figure to 5.5. Type whichever you plan to do.
How many 16 ft sticks does 47 feet of baseboard take?
Three, if the run can be cut anywhere, and that buys 48 ft with one foot spare. It is the answer to hold only when the joints are free to fall where the arithmetic puts them, which for baseboard means every wall is longer than a stick or you are willing to scarf. Where each wall has to be one piece, 47 ft split as 13, 13, 11 and 10 needs four sticks — a 14, a 14, a 12 and a 10 — and buys 50 ft instead. The division is right about the material and wrong about the walls.
Can baseboard be joined in the middle of a wall?
Yes, with a scarf joint over a stud, and it is standard practice on any wall longer than the rack. Cut both pieces at 45 degrees so they overlap rather than butt, put the joint on a stud so both halves are nailed, glue the faces, and orient it so the visible edge faces away from the room's main approach. The reason for the angle is seasonal: a butt joint opens into a black line every winter, while a scarf joint slides over itself and the gap stays hidden. On a run of 20 ft the choice is not really optional, since nothing on a trim rack reaches it.
Should a trim order carry a waste percentage at all?
A small one, and for a narrower reason than on sheet or bulk goods. The leftover from buying whole sticks is already reported here as an offcut, so a percentage on top of that is not covering the rack — it covers miters cut backwards, a coped end that splits, and the piece measured an inch short. Ten percent is the usual figure and it is worth adjusting by corner count rather than by area: a plain rectangular room burns almost none of it, while a bay window, a stair skirt and a run of returns can spend all of it in an afternoon.
Why does giving every wall its own uncut piece need more sticks than the total does?
Because a length cannot be assembled out of shorter lengths without a joint, and the division pretends it can. Five walls of 9 ft are 45 linear feet, which divides into three 16 ft sticks with 3 ft to spare — but no 16 ft stick makes two 9 ft pieces, so the real order is five 10 ft sticks, 50 ft, and 5 ft of offcut. The gap widens whenever runs land just above a stock length and closes when they are short enough that two fit in one stick. Both numbers appear on this page because both are correct answers to questions that sound identical at the counter.
About buying by the running foot
The unit is deliberately thin: a linear foot describes distance along a piece and nothing else, which is what makes it useful for baseboard, decking, gutter, fence rail and cable, and useless for anything whose cross-section is the point. The trap it sets is at the price list. Two suppliers quoting per linear foot are only comparable when the profile is the same, because the width and thickness live inside the rate rather than beside it — a fact the countertop and cabinet trades exploit openly, quoting per linear foot of run at an assumed depth. Where the section is the product rather than an assumption, the trade switches to a unit that carries it: hardwood is priced by volume, in the quarters and surface measure set out on the board foot calculator, and sheet goods by area.
Turning an area into a length needs one more number than most people expect: the width a board covers, which is not its nominal name and usually not its measured width either. A nominal 6 in deck board is 5.5 in dressed and is laid with roughly a quarter-inch gap, so it covers 5.75 in and 192 square feet of deck takes about 401 feet of board. Count it by rows instead and the figure moves — 12 feet across is 25.04 boards, so 26 rows of 16 ft is 416 feet — and the row count is the one to order against, because rows are whole and the last one is not going to be four percent of a board. That is also why the gap belongs in the input rather than in a fudge factor, and why it works the opposite way round to most allowances: butting the boards tight drops the coverage to 5.5 in and the same deck then wants 419 feet of board, eighteen more than the gapped layout.
Then comes the part almost every competitor skips. Nothing on this list is sold by the foot; it is sold in sticks of fixed length, and 47 feet of casing arrives as three 16 ft pieces with a foot on the floor. Whether that division is the right answer depends entirely on your joints — a fence rail can be butted over a post and nobody will ever look, while a scarfed handrail is the first thing a hand finds — so both counts are given here rather than one. Runs measured around a boundary usually start as an area, and the acreage that produced them is on the acre calculator. Length is also the wrong unit for anything hollow: a run of pipe is linear feet of pipe but what fits inside it is a volume, which is the cylinder volume calculator for a round section and the tank volume calculator for the oval and capsule shapes a tank is actually built in.
Where your measurements go
Every number on this page is worked out by JavaScript running in the tab you are reading it in. Nothing you type — measurements, quantities, the prices your supplier quoted you — is uploaded, logged or kept, which is also why the calculators carry on working on a site with no signal.
The runs you type, the rack you pick and the rate your yard quoted stay on the device. Nothing is sent to a supplier and no list is kept after the tab closes, so a take-off you want to keep needs the copy button or the printed sheet.