Square Meter Calculator for Dubai and the UAE

Almost every material for a building is sold by the square metre here.

Tiles, marble, vinyl, laminate, carpet, wallpaper, cladding and waterproofing membrane are all priced that way.

So are most trade rates. Tiling, painting, plastering and flooring are commonly quoted per square metre of work done.

That makes the square metre the working unit of any building job, even in a country that describes its property in square feet.

It also means getting the area right is worth two minutes, because everything downstream is multiplied by it.

A rate on its own is ambiguous, and the ambiguity is where disputes start.

It might be material only, meaning the tile and nothing else. It might be labour only, meaning fitting a tile you supply. Or it might be supply and fit, which is both.

The same job can be quoted all three ways by three different people, and the numbers will look wildly different for no real reason.

So ask the question directly. Is that supply only, fit only, or supply and fit. And does it include the adhesive, the grout and the preparation.

Then put the like for like figure into this tool. Once both quotes describe the same thing, the comparison means something.

The area you measure and the area you order are never the same, and treating them as the same is how jobs run short.

Material is cut at edges, and the offcuts are usually too small to use. Some breaks. Some arrives faulty.

How much depends entirely on what you are buying. Tiles waste around ten to twelve per cent in a simple room and much more with a diagonal pattern. Carpet from a roll can waste far more. Planks waste less.

The other reason to add extra is spares. Keeping a box of the tile or a length of the flooring means a repair in three years is simple. Without it, you are matching a discontinued product.

Order it all at once too. Batches vary in shade, and a second order rarely matches the first.

One square metre is about 10.76 square feet. That is the only number you need and it is worth remembering.

The mistake people make is halving or doubling instead. The units differ by more than ten times, not by two, because area scales with the square of length.

One metre is about 3.28 feet, so one square metre is 3.28 times 3.28, which is 10.76.

Practically, that means a 1,000 square foot apartment is around 93 square metres, and a 20 square metre room is around 215 square feet.

If a number looks like it is out by a factor of ten, this conversion is usually the reason.