Room by room

A gallery for the rooms you actually live in

Practical guides to improving, furnishing and finishing a home — kitchens and interiors, gardens and outdoor rooms, keeping the place safe, and the small decisions that make a room work.

Free to readNo sign-up, no paywall, no newsletter wall.
Written to be usedGuides you follow while the job is in front of you.
Home & gardenKitchens, patios, planting, safety and heating.
A tool that runs on your deviceThe paint calculator does its sums in your browser.

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Free tool · runs in your browser

The paint calculator

Put in the size of the room and how many coats you want, and it works out how much paint to buy — with the doors and windows taken off, and rounded up to whole tins with a little spare.

Open the calculator

What you’ll get

Wall area from the room size, minus doors and windows
Litres needed for one, two or three coats
Rounded up to whole tins, with a little in hand
Works in metres or in feet
Runs in your browser — nothing is sent or stored

Corrections & suggestions

Spotted something, or want a room covered?

Products change, and what works in a small flat does not always work in an old house. If a guide is out of date, or there is a room or a job you would like us to write up, the editorial team would like to hear about it.

Email the editors [email protected] We reply within a few working days.