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Plasterboard Sheets Calculator

Plasterboard sheets, screws and jointing compound for your wall area.

How it is calculated

The tool divides the area you need to cover, after adding a waste allowance, by the area of one sheet: sheets = ceil(A × (1 + w ÷ 100) ÷ (L × W)), with A in m², L and W the sheet length and width in metres, and w the waste in percent. The result is always rounded up to whole sheets. Screws are a flat 30 per sheet, and jointing compound is 0.5 kg per m² of board bought (sheets × L × W × 0.5). A blank sheet size, or blank waste, falls back to 2.4 × 1.2 m and 10 %; a value you actually type must be valid. Length above 6 m, width above 3 m, or waste below 0 or above 100 shows no result. These quantities are rules of thumb; board thickness, fixing spacing and finishing coats vary by job and country.

Worked example

A 36 m² wall with standard 2.4 × 1.2 m sheets and 10 % waste. One sheet covers 2.4 × 1.2 = 2.88 m². The area with waste is 36 × 1.10 = 39.6 m², and 39.6 ÷ 2.88 = 13.75, rounded up to 14 sheets. The boards you buy cover 14 × 2.88 = 40.32 m². Screws are 14 × 30 = 420, and jointing compound is 40.32 × 0.5 = 20.16 kg.

Try this example →

Common mistakes

  • Entering the room's floor area or the perimeter instead of the wall area to be boarded. Multiply wall height by wall length yourself, and subtract large openings only if you will not reuse the cut-outs.
  • Typing the sheet size in millimetres (2400 and 1200). The fields are in metres, and these values are refused as impossible sizes, so the result disappears; enter 2.4 and 1.2.
  • Setting waste to 0 for a room with many doors, windows and corners. Offcuts there often cannot be reused, so a small allowance is realistic; 0 here would give 13 sheets instead of 14.
  • Ordering to the board-area figure and ignoring the rounding. Sheets are bought whole, so the board area shown is larger than the wall area.
  • Using the screw and compound lines as a precise shopping list. They are flat averages per sheet, not a count for your stud spacing.

About this calculator

Plasterboard (drywall) sheet estimating divides the total wall area to be covered by the area of a single standard sheet (commonly 2.4m x 1.2m, or 4ft x 8ft), then adds a waste allowance — typically 10-15% — to cover offcuts around doors, windows and corners that can't be reused efficiently. Screw count is estimated at a flat 30 screws per sheet (roughly one screw every 300mm along each stud), and jointing compound at about 0.5 kg per square metre of board, to allow for the several coats of compound and tape each seam needs to finish flush.

Builders and DIYers run these numbers before a plastering job because underordering means a delayed trip back to the merchant mid-job — often at a worse price for a small top-up order — while overordering ties up cash in materials that may not be returnable once cut, so getting the sheet count, screw quantity and compound volume right the first time keeps a drywall job running on schedule and on budget.

Sheets default to 2.4 x 1.2 metres and waste to 10% when those fields are left blank, so a rough estimate needs only the wall area.

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