Drywall calculator
Sheets, compound, tape, screws and bead
Almost every drywall calculator on the internet gives you a sheet count and stops. The sheet count is the easy half. What actually gets forgotten at the supply house is mud, tape, screws and bead, so this one counts all five — and shows you where every number came from.
The screws are not guessed by the pound — they are counted off GA-216 spacing: 12 inches on center on ceilings, and on walls 16 inches over 16 inch framing and 12 inches over 24 inch framing. The tape comes out of joint geometry. The compound rate is the one figure here that is ours rather than a standard, and it is labelled as ours every time it is used.
The whole job
These four sizes are editable starting values, not a published estimating constant. Change them to your actual openings. And know that a lot of takeoffs deduct nothing at all, because the cutout usually leaves the sheet as scrap rather than as usable board.
The ceiling is boarded first and the walls run tight up under it. It also carries a tighter screw pattern than a wall, so it moves the fastener count more than its area suggests.
How this room was calculated
Enter a length, a width and a wall height and the arithmetic appears here.
What to order
Put a length, a width and a wall height into the room above and the numbers land here.
The project total, step by step
Fill in a room first.
This is an estimate, and here is what it is not
A sheet count off room dimensions is an order of magnitude, not a takeoff. A real takeoff comes off the plans: it lays the sheets out room by room, puts the butt joints where the light will not find them, counts the specialty board separately, counts bullnose transitions and reveal by the piece, and accounts for soffits, returns, closets, high walls and everything that is not a rectangle. That is the number a job gets built and priced from.
This tool also counts one face per room, which is the right way round: a partition between two rooms gets boarded from both sides, and it gets counted once in each room. Closets, the garage and the hallway are rooms too. Leave them out and the number will be low.
Nothing here is sent anywhere. It runs in your browser, and the half-finished takeoff survives a refresh because it is saved on your own device.
How to use it properly
- 1
Measure the room
Length and width in feet, plus the wall height. If the room is L-shaped, treat it as two rectangles and add them. Closets, the hallway and the garage are rooms too — leave them out and the number comes in low.
- 2
Pick the sheet size
A longer sheet means fewer butt joints, and butt joints are the most visible thing on a wall under raking light. The trade-off is weight and getting the sheet into the room.
- 3
Count the outside corners
Nobody counts these and everybody runs short of bead. A plain rectangular room has none, so you have to go looking — returns, columns, soffits, unframed door jambs.
- 4
Open the arithmetic
Every room and the project total print their whole chain. If you disagree with an assumption, change it and watch the number move.
Why this one counts the consumables
Because board is the part nobody forgets. Nobody shows up to a job without sheets. People run out of mud halfway through the afternoon of day two, run out of tape on the last inside corner, and find out they never bought bead for the hallway return. Each of those is a trip to the supply house, and a trip to the supply house with the crew standing still costs more than the material did.
The other reason is that counting consumables shows you something a sheet count hides. Screws move with framing spacing, not with area. A ceiling carries a tighter pattern than a wall. Tape is driven by the number of joints rather than by square footage, so a longer sheet brings the tape and the compound down at the same time. None of that shows up in a sheet total.
The whole chain, in one line
Perimeter times wall height, minus the openings, plus the ceiling, divided by the sheet area, times one plus the waste factor. That is the entire sheet count. The screws come from counting how many framing members a four-foot sheet crosses and how many fasteners land on each one. The tape is half the perimeter of every sheet — because every flat joint is shared by two sheets — plus four vertical corners per room and the wall-to-ceiling perimeter. The bead is outside corners times the height.
What it cannot do
It is not a takeoff and it is not a quote. A real takeoff comes off the plans: it lays the sheets out one at a time, decides where the butt joints fall relative to the light, counts specialty board and bullnose transitions by the piece, and accounts for soffits, high walls, returns and everything that is not a rectangle. And no tool can see the condition of the framing behind your wall, which is where the price is actually decided.
When you want the real number, we measure it
We walk the framing, check the spacing against the board thickness, count the bead and the transitions, and write the scope down with the finish level named in it. Free estimates, in English or Spanish.