Two stick counts, and why they differ
Divide the total footage by the stick length and you get a number that would be right if trim were a liquid. It is not. A 14 foot wall needs a piece at least 14 feet long, and if the longest stick your supplier carries is 16 feet, that wall consumes one stick and leaves two feet of offcut that is too short to be the first piece of anything else. Do that on four walls and the footage-only count is short by two or three sticks.
This page reports both. The footage count is what a materials list generated from square footage will say. The per-wall count adds up the sticks each individual run actually needs, and it is the number to buy from. Where they disagree the difference is real material, not padding.
Casing is the exception and is counted by footage, because casing legs and heads are short pieces that genuinely do come out of offcuts. A door needs two pieces around 82 inches and one around 38, and all three can be cut from a single 16 foot stick with room to spare.
Where the footage goes
| Profile | Runs along | Deductions |
|---|---|---|
| Baseboard | Wall perimeter | Doorway openings, since the base dies into the casing on both sides |
| Shoe / quarter round | Same as baseboard | Same, plus none at all if you are only shoeing the walls that need it |
| Crown | Full perimeter at the ceiling | None — it passes over every opening |
| Door casing | Two legs and a head per side | Not applicable, it is counted per opening |
| Window casing | Four sides, or three with a stool and apron | Not applicable |
The casing figures here add two inches to each leg and six inches to each head. That covers the reveal, which is the eighth to quarter inch of jamb you deliberately leave showing, plus the outside corners of the miters, plus the small amount you lose squaring the end of a factory stick. It is a working allowance, not a specification, and a wide casing profile with a heavy outside miter wants more.
Miter waste is not a rounding error
The default here is 12 percent, and on a room with a lot of corners it should be higher. Every outside corner is two miters, and a compound miter on crown that comes out proud has to be recut, which shortens the piece past usefulness. Inside corners on baseboard are usually coped rather than mitered because coped joints survive seasonal movement in the framing, and coping costs you the length of the cope plus the practice pieces.
Buy the offcut-prone profiles long. It is easier to shorten a 16 foot stick than to lengthen a 12 foot one, and the extra cost of the longer stick is small next to a second trip.
Ordering with the finish in mind
Primed trim and raw trim behave differently in an order. Primed MDF is dimensionally stable and cheap, but it swells permanently if it takes water, which rules it out at the base of a bathroom wall or anywhere near a slab that has not been checked for moisture. Solid wood costs more and needs its cut ends sealed. If you are painting, order the trim, get it in the room, and let it sit for several days at the room's own humidity before you cut anything, or your tight inside corners will open in a month.
For the wall behind the trim, the drywall calculator covers sheets and compound, and if you are running baseboard against new flooring the flooring calculator works out the last-row width that decides whether the shoe covers the expansion gap.
Questions people ask
How much trim waste should I allow?
Between 10 and 15 percent for most rooms, at the higher end when the room has bay walls, several outside corners, or a profile you have not run before. The reason waste is a percentage rather than a fixed number is that it scales with the number of joints, not with the length. A single long wall wastes almost nothing. A room broken into six short runs with four outside corners wastes on every one of them. If you are running crown for the first time, budget one full extra stick purely for practice cuts, because compound miters are not intuitive and the first several will be wrong in ways that are hard to predict from the drawing.
Should baseboard be deducted for doorways?
Yes, for the opening width, which is what this calculator does. The base runs up to the door casing and dies into it on both sides, so the casing width itself is not baseboard. Where people get it wrong is cased openings with no door in them, which still interrupt the base and still need casing on both faces. Set the sides field to two for those. Windows that reach the floor interrupt the base as well and are not handled automatically here, so subtract them by hand or add them as extra doors.
What length sticks should I buy?
The longest that fits your walls and your vehicle, within reason. Fewer splices is the whole argument: a scarf joint in a painted baseboard is close to invisible once caulked and painted, but it is another joint that can open, and on stained trim it is visible from the start. Against that, 16 foot sticks are awkward to transport, easy to damage, and a bent one is worthless. Most people land on 16 foot for long straight walls and 8 or 12 foot for rooms full of short runs. Check the stick lengths your supplier actually stocks in the profile you want before you plan around a length.
Does this include the stool and apron on a window?
No. Choosing the stool and apron style drops the bottom casing leg from the count, because that side is covered by the stool, but the stool and apron themselves are different profiles in different lengths and are usually bought as separate items. A stool typically runs the window width plus a few inches of horn at each end, and the apron runs somewhere between the width of the opening and the outside of the casing depending on how you detail it. Add those separately once you have decided how far the horns project.
Can I use the total footage to price the job?
For material, yes, and this page shows the cost both ways because they differ. Priced by the foot you pay for what you use; priced by the stick you pay for the offcuts too, and the stick figure is the honest one when you are buying at a lumberyard that sells whole sticks. Neither figure covers fasteners, adhesive, filler, caulk or paint, and it does not cover the labour, which for trim is most of the cost. Trim is slow work: a careful installer running coped inside corners on a plain rectangular room is still measuring, cutting and fitting one piece at a time.