Baseboard calculator

How to work out how much baseboard you need

Trim is sold by the piece, not by the foot, and every wall eats a piece in its own way. So the useful answer is not "49 linear feet" but "eight 8 ft boards, cut like this". Here is the math the calculator runs with its opening values: a 14 x 12 ft room, one door and 8 ft pieces.

1. 1

   Find the perimeter

   (14 + 12) x 2 = 52 ft of wall. In an L-shaped room or one with a closet, measure each wall run instead and use "Total wall length".

2. 2

   Subtract the doors

   Baseboard stops at the door casing. A 30 or 32 inch door plus its casing takes up about 3 ft, so 52 − 3 = 49 linear feet. Wider openings and patio doors take more.

3. 3

   Plan each wall

   The walls are 14, 14, 12 and 12 ft, with the door taking 3 ft off one long wall (11 ft). Each gets 2 inches for the corner cuts. Every wall is longer than 8 ft, so each takes one full piece plus a shorter piece joined with a scarf joint.

4. 4

   Pack the short pieces

   The four leftover lengths are about 6 ft 2 in, 4 ft 2 in, 4 ft 2 in and 3 ft 2 in. The 3 ft 2 in and one 4 ft 2 in come out of one board, so the shorts take 3 boards. 4 + 3 = 7 pieces, plus one spare for a bad cut: buy 8.

5. 5

   Price the job

   8 pieces x 8 ft x $1.29 = $83 of primed MDF. A box of finish nails ($10), a tube of caulk ($5), wood filler ($6) and a quart of semi-gloss ($16) bring it to $120, about 5 hours of work for a careful first-timer.

Switch to 12 ft pieces and the same room takes 6 pieces with the spare, and only the full 14 ft wall needs a joint: the 12 ft walls and the 11 ft wall each go up in one piece. Tick "Quarter round" and the calculator runs the same plan again for the shoe molding. Tick "Crown molding" and it plans the full 52 ft ceiling line, since crown runs over the doors.

8, 12 or 16 ft pieces?

Short pieces are easier to carry home and handle alone. Long pieces cover a wall with fewer joints, and joints are where trim shows its age: a scarf joint can open up a hairline crack as the house moves through the seasons. Here is the default 14 x 12 room with one door, plus one spare:

With 16 ft boards every wall goes up in one piece, at the cost of more offcut. Many big-box stores stock primed MDF baseboard mostly in 8 ft lengths, while pine and hardwood come longer, and a lumberyard will have the most choice. If you can only get 8 ft pieces, put the joints where furniture will hide them.

What trim costs

Shelf prices for the most common profiles, checked in October 2026. Taller, thicker and fancier profiles cost more, and stain-grade hardwood can cost several times as much as primed MDF.

By material, HomeGuide reports $1 to $3.50 per foot for MDF, $1 to $10 for solid wood and $0.50 to $5 for PVC. PVC and other plastic trim cost a bit more than MDF but shrug off water, which makes them the better pick for bathrooms, laundry rooms and basements, where MDF swells if it gets wet.

DIY vs. hiring a carpenter

HomeGuide puts baseboard at $6 to $9 per linear foot installed, or $400 to $1,500 for a 100 to 150 foot job. Carpenters charge $30 to $100 an hour and put up about 20 feet an hour. For the default room, a pro would charge about $294 to $441, against $120 in materials to do it yourself. The calculator shows that comparison under the shopping list.

Baseboard is a fair first trim job: it sits low, small gaps disappear under caulk, and a mistake costs one board. What you need is a miter saw, a coping saw for inside corners, a stud finder and ideally a finish nailer (many tool rental shops and big-box stores rent them). Crown molding is harder. It sits at an angle against the wall and ceiling, so every cut is a compound cut, and you work overhead on a ladder. If it is your first crown job, buy an extra piece to practice on, or leave crown to a carpenter.

Tips from the trade

• Cope inside corners. Instead of two 45° miters, run one piece square into the corner and cut the end of the other to the profile with a coping saw. A coped joint stays tight when the walls are out of square or the wood shrinks.
• Miter outside corners and glue them. A dab of wood glue and a pin nail through the miter keep it from opening up later.
• Put scarf joints over a stud. Cut both pieces at matching 45° angles, overlap them, glue and nail through both into the stud.
• Mark the studs first. Run painter's tape just above the trim line and mark every stud. Nail into the studs and the bottom plate, not just the drywall.
• Mind the floor. Floating floors need an expansion gap at the walls. Leave it, and cover it with quarter round or shoe nailed to the baseboard, never to the floor.
• Paint before, touch up after. Paint the boards on sawhorses before they go up, then fill the nail holes, caulk the top edge and do one final coat on the wall.
• Older homes: trim painted before 1978 may have lead paint. Prying it off is fine with care, but don't sand or burn it. The EPA's lead-safe guidance applies.

Common questions

Sources and assumptions

The cut list is plain geometry: walls are filled with full pieces and the leftover lengths are packed largest first into as few boards as possible. Prices are US shelf prices checked in October 2026 and change by store and region. All three trim prices can be edited.

• Installed prices and labor ($6 to $9 per ft for baseboard, $3 to $7 quarter round, $4 to $6 shoe, $7 to $16 crown; $400 to $1,500 per job; $30 to $100 an hour; about 20 ft an hour; material ranges for MDF, wood and PVC) come from HomeGuide, baseboard installation cost (October 2025).
• Trim prices: $10.28 for an 8 ft piece of primed MDF 3¼ in baseboard, $15.48 for finger-joint pine and $15.98 for 4½ in primed MDF crown from Home Depot listings, $7.18 for 8 ft of MDF shoe molding (Home Depot), and $5.99 for 8 ft of primed pine quarter round from True Value.
• Caulk: $4.98 per 10.1 oz tube of acrylic latex caulk, from a distributor listing. A 10.1 oz tube holds about 18 cubic inches, which is roughly 95 ft of a 1/8 inch bead; we count one tube per 50 ft of caulked edge to allow for gaps and waste.
• Our estimates (no single source): 3 ft per door; 2 in per wall for corner cuts; 10% extra in "Total wall length" mode; about 1.5 nails per foot (two per stud at 16 in on center) and $10 per box of 1,000; $6 for wood filler; a quart of semi-gloss at $16 covering about 87 sq ft, with the visible face taken as 3½ in for baseboard, 1 in for quarter round and 4½ in for crown; DIY time at 10 ft an hour, half a pro's pace.
• Lead paint: see the EPA's Renovation, Repair and Painting program before disturbing paint in a home built before 1978.
• Metric mode uses meters, 2.4, 3.6 and 4.8 m pieces and prices per meter in US dollars.