HomeCalc Help Documentation

A complete guide to the home and property calculators, from measuring your rooms to the shopping list.

Last Updated: November 9, 2026

1. Getting Started

The seven tabs choose the calculator: Rooms, Paint and wallpaper, Tiles, Cement and bricks, Property area, Renovation budget and Rent. Above them, the toolbar shows whether you are measuring in feet or metres, with the Feet and Metres switch, Settings and Help. Answers change as you type; there is nothing to press. Each calculator offers an example to try when it is empty, such as Try a 12 x 10 ft room.

On a computer the boxes are on the left and the answer on the right; on a phone the answer comes under the boxes, and a one-line summary stays at the top of the screen while you type.

2. Feet, Metres and Typing Values

Choose Feet or Metres in the toolbar, or press U. A plain number is read in the unit you chose, and every box still takes any unit:

• Lengths: 12, 12.5, 12'6", 12 ft 6 in, 3.8 m, 380 cm, 3800 mm, 150 in, and sums such as 10' + 4'6".
• Areas: 1200, 1200 sq ft, 111.5 sq m, 150 gaj, 2 guntha, 10 cent, 1 ground, 1 acre, 0.5 hectare.
• Amounts: 45000, 1,45,000, 45k, 1.5L, 2 lakh, 1.2 cr, 450 + 300, 150 x 22, Rs500.

The line under each box shows what was understood, or says that the value cannot be read. Switching between feet and metres converts the numbers you typed; a value typed with its own unit (12'6") is kept as you typed it.

3. Your Rooms

1. Press Add a room, or Start from a plan for a 1, 2 or 3 BHK example with example sizes to change.
2. Name the room and choose its shape: Rectangle, L-shape (the overall length and width and the size of the missing corner), Round (the distance across), Triangle (the three walls) or Other (a floor area you know, with the distance around it if the walls matter).
3. Type the height (empty uses the usual ceiling height from Settings) and the number of doors and windows. Under Walls not painted, type the area of wardrobes, tiled walls or anything else you will not paint.

Each room is drawn as a plan with its floor area, the walls to paint and the distance around it. The totals above the rooms give the floor (about the carpet area), the walls to paint, the ceilings and the air. Paint these rooms, Tile these floors and Use as carpet area open those calculators set to your rooms. The copy and bin buttons beside a room's name copy or remove it; a removed room can be brought back from the message that appears.

4. Paint

1. Under What to paint, choose One room (its length, width, height, doors and windows, and whether to paint the ceiling), My rooms (tick the rooms, and walls, ceilings or both) or Area I know.
2. Choose the paint and type what one litre covers from the tin. Indian tins give it for two coats, so leave Coverage is for on 2 coats. The starting figures are the lower end of a large Indian maker's product sheets: interior emulsion 130 sq ft a litre, premium emulsion 140, exterior emulsion 55 and gloss enamel 95, all for two coats.
3. Choose the coats, and what the walls are like: a repaint in the same colour, a new colour, dark to light or new plaster. Primer and putty are ticked to match; the starting coverage is primer 215 sq ft a litre in one coat and putty 16 sq ft a kg in two coats.
4. Under Tin sizes, prices and labour, set the extra for spills (10% to start with), the tin sizes your shop sells, their prices and the painter's labour per square foot.

The answer gives the litres, the tins to buy (the cheapest mix of the sizes you listed; without prices, bigger tins are taken to cost a little less per litre), the primer and putty, the cost, a table room by room, tips, and how it is worked out. Add to budget sends the list to the budget, and Share list copies it (on a phone, it opens the phone's Share).

5. Wallpaper

Under Work out, choose Wallpaper, then One wall, One room or My rooms. Choose the roll size (a standard 0.53 x 10.05 m roll, a wide 1.06 x 10.05 m roll, a US double roll, or another size), the pattern match and its repeat (on the roll's label), the spare rolls and the price per roll, and how many rolls one packet of paste hangs (on the packet). Each strip is the wall height plus 10 cm for trimming, rounded up to the pattern repeat; a half-drop pattern takes half a repeat more. Windows are not taken off, because the short pieces around them come out of the rolls.

6. Tiles and Flooring

1. Under What to tile, choose One area (a floor or a wall), My rooms (floors, or walls up to a height you choose) or Area I know.
2. Choose the tile size (or type another, such as 600 x 600 mm, 2 x 2 ft or 12 x 18 in), the number in a box (printed on the box; filled in for 600 x 600, 600 x 1200 and 800 x 1600), the joint and the pattern. For tiles laid straight, choose to start From a corner or Centred.
3. Under Fixing and finishing, choose tile adhesive (type what one bag covers, from the bag), a cement mortar bed (its thickness and mix) or neither; the skirting cut from the same tiles and its height; and the spare for breakage.
4. Under Prices and labour, the price per square foot or per box, the laying labour and the tile thickness for the grout.

A rectangle laid straight is counted from its real layout, drawn with the whole tiles and the cut pieces; thin pieces are cut several from one tile, with 3 mm lost to each cut. If the cuts at the walls are thin, HomeCalc says so and offers to centre the tiles. Other shapes and patterns are counted by area plus 10% for cuts (straight or brick), 15% (diagonal) or 20% (herringbone). Grout uses the grout makers' formula with a density of 1.6, plus 10%; a mortar bed is 20 mm of 1 : 4 with grey cement slurry at 3.3 kg a square metre.

7. Concrete

1. Under Work out, choose Concrete.
2. For each piece, choose its kind (a slab or floor, a footing, a square or round column, a beam, a staircase, or a volume you know), type its sizes and how many there are. Add another piece adds more.
3. Choose the grade (M5 to M20), the extra for spills and uneven ground, and, from the bar schedule of your structural drawing, the steel in kg per cubic metre (empty leaves steel out).
4. Under Prices, the cement per 50 kg bag, sand and aggregate (per cubic foot, brass, tonne or cubic metre), steel per kg and ready-mix per cubic metre.

The dry materials take 1.54 times the wet volume, split by the mix (M20 is 1 : 1.5 : 3); cement weighs 1,440 kg a cubic metre. The answer gives the bags of cement, the sand and aggregate in cubic feet, brass, tonnes and cubic metres, the most water IS 456 allows for the grade (30 litres a bag for M20), the steel if you typed it, and the ready-mix to order (rounded up to half a cubic metre, in trucks of 6 cubic metres) with its cost against mixing on site. IS 456 allows mixes by proportion only up to M20; M25 and stronger need a designed mix.

8. Bricks, Blocks and Plaster

Bricks and blocks: type the wall's length and height and the area of its doors and windows, choose the brick or block (modular, traditional and fly ash bricks, AAC blocks 100, 150 or 200 mm thick, or a solid concrete block), the wall thickness (half a brick or one brick), the mortar joint and mix, and the extra for breakage. A wall one brick thick is counted by volume, half a brick or a block by its face. The mortar is the wall less the bricks; its dry materials take 1.33 times that, plus 10%.

Plaster: choose one wall (one side or both), your rooms (with the ceilings if you like) or an area you know, then the thickness (6 mm for ceilings, 12 mm inside, 15 mm, or 20 mm outside) and the mix. The wet plaster is the area times the thickness; its dry materials take 1.33 times that, plus the extra for uneven walls.

9. Property Area and Price

1. Choose the area you have (Super built-up, Built-up or Carpet) and type it from the brochure or the agreement.
2. Type how much the walls and balconies add (built-up over carpet; empty leaves built-up out) and how much the loading adds (super built-up over carpet; 40% to start with, the average ANAROCK found in India's seven largest cities in early 2025).
3. Type the price per square foot and the area it is quoted on, or the total price; choose the GST (none for a ready flat, 5% under construction, 1% for an affordable flat) and type your state's stamp duty and registration and any other charges.

The answer gives the carpet area and how much of what you were quoted it is, the three areas side by side, the price, the price per square foot of carpet, and the all-in price with taxes and charges. Carpet area is the area builders must state under RERA (2016); compare flats on its price per square foot.

10. Land Units

Under Property area, Land and area units converts an area between square feet, square metres, square yards (gaj), acres, hectares, cents, gunthas and grounds. A guntha is 1,089 sq ft (40 make an acre), a cent 435.6 sq ft and a ground 2,400 sq ft. Bigha and marla are left out, because they mean different areas in different states.

11. Renovation Budget

Type your budget and the buffer for surprises (10% to start with). Add items with Add an item, from Add a typical list (the items for a whole home, a kitchen, a bathroom, a bedroom, a living room or the electrical work, without prices), or from the other calculators with Add to budget; each calculator's lines replace the ones it sent before and are marked with where they came from. Each item has a category, the item, a quantity, a unit, a rate and what you have paid. The answer shows the total with the buffer, what is left of the budget or how far over it is, what is paid and what is still to pay, and where the money goes. Spreadsheet saves a CSV file and Print prints the budget on one sheet.

12. Rent You Can Afford

Type your take-home pay a month (add a partner's pay if you share the rent), loan EMIs, other fixed costs, living costs, the savings you want and the flat's bills, and choose the most rent as a share of pay (30% is a common rule of thumb). The rent you can afford is the lower of that share and what is left after everything else; the answer says which limit applies and shows your month as a bar. Add a flat you saw checks a flat: its rent and maintenance, the deposit and brokerage in months of rent, moving costs and the yearly rise, giving the monthly cost and its share of your pay, whether it fits, the cash to move in, and the rent in the second and third years.

13. Settings and Your Data

Settings holds the unit (feet or metres), the money sign (rupee, dollar, pound, euro, dirham or none), the usual ceiling height, and the usual door and window sizes used for every room. Under Your data: Save a backup writes everything to a file, Open a backup replaces what is here with a backup after you confirm (files over 10 MB are refused, and every value is checked), and Delete everything removes HomeCalc's data from this browser and leaves the rest of the site alone. Everything is kept in this browser on this device; nothing is written until you type or choose something. The site's sun and moon button sets the light or dark theme.

14. Keyboard Shortcuts

Outside a text box: 1 to 7 open the seven calculators, U switches feet and metres, and ? opens the help. On the tabs, ← and → move between them, with Home and End. Esc closes a window. A link to the tool ending in #paint, #tiles, #build, #area, #budget or #rent opens that calculator.

15. How It Was Checked

Before it was published, the figures the tool starts from were checked against their sources: the paint makers' product sheets, a tile maker's catalogue, IS 456 for concrete, the public works specification for tile mortar, ANAROCK's study of loading, and the definitions of the land units. Its sums were then compared with a separate reference written from the rules on this page, with thousands of lengths, areas and amounts written in many ways, rooms of every shape, the cheapest tins against a search of every mix, wallpaper, tile layouts laid out piece by piece, concrete, bricks, plaster, property areas, the budget, rent and flats, and damaged and hostile saved values. The page was then checked in the browser on phones and computers, in both themes, with an accessibility scan of every calculator and window.

16. Troubleshooting

• A box says it cannot read the value. Check the unit: 12'6" or 12 ft 6 in for feet and inches, and a space or nothing between a number and its unit. Lengths over 10 km and amounts over 10 lakh crore are refused.
• A room is missing from My rooms. It still needs its sizes, or, for paint, wallpaper and wall tiles, the distance around it (an Other room without it has no walls).
• The tiles show no boxes. Type the number of tiles in a box, printed on the box.
• There is no adhesive or paste in the list. Type what one bag of adhesive covers, or how many rolls one packet of paste hangs; both are printed on the pack.
• The property calculator asks for a percentage. The area you typed is built-up or super built-up, and the percentage that turns it into carpet area is empty.
• My data is gone. It is kept per browser and device; a private window or cleared browser data starts empty. Open your latest backup.

17. Support

For questions the FAQ does not answer, use the contact form. These calculators are for planning and buying; ask your engineer or contractor before you build.