← Carpet installation bid calculator
Carpet installers get shopped on a published $2 a yard installed Facebook special. Those numbers cannot see the stairs or the waste. A flat living-room stretch is a different job from a patterned glue-down with fourteen stairs, a tear-out, and a furniture move.
Open the free carpet installation bid calculatorA carpet install is a floor, then the stairs, then how the goods go down. Stretch-in over pad is the cheap living-room special. Glue-down is adhesive on a slab. Double-stick is both. Carpet tile wastes less roll. Solid is no match. Patterned is match waste and extra seaming. Stairs are priced per step: each wrap is tread, riser, and extra seaming that floor yards do not see.
Homeowners usually start from the living-room special, then ask whether “the stairs are a little more.” On the same floor they are not a little more. Thirteen stairs buy wraps, extra seaming, and a different crew hour. The calculator prices 0, 7, 13, and 21 stairs on the floor you already measured so you can quote the wraps instead of matching the flat-floor number on a stair house.
The cheap special is almost always a solid stretch-in on a flat room, no tear-out, no furniture, no haul. A patterned glue-down with fourteen stairs is a different crew hour. Matching a per-yard number on a stair-and-tear-out job is how a sold carpet becomes a loss when the wraps and the dump ticket eat the margin.
Carpet cleaning is steam, rooms, and pet urine. Flooring install is LVP, hardwood, and tile as hard-surface waste and tear-out. Epoxy is grind and flake. Hardwood refinishing is sand and finish. A kitchen backsplash is a wall. A walk-in shower is wet-area tile. This prices a carpet installation: the floor yards, the stairs, the stretch-versus-glue scope, and extras.
Load the wage with payroll burden. Add overhead as a share of direct cost. Then take margin as a share of the customer’s price, not a markup on cost. The walk-away number is total cost. A proposed price under that number loses money before you take anything out of it.
This page is a walkthrough of the arithmetic in the carpet installation bid calculator. It is not a flooring-spec determination, a moisture test, or a price you should copy onto a contract.
Charge from floor yards, stairs, stretch-versus-glue, patterned waste, and extras — not a published $2-a-yard special. A flat living-room stretch is a different job from a patterned glue-down with fourteen stairs, a tear-out, and a furniture move.
No. Stairs are priced per step: each wrap is tread, riser, and extra seaming. Floor yards do not see that labor. Matching a living-room special on a 13-stair house is how a sold carpet becomes a loss when the wraps eat the margin.
No. Stretch-in over pad is the cheap living-room special. Glue-down is adhesive on a slab. Double-stick is both. Carpet tile wastes less roll. Matching a stretch-in number on a glue-down job is the losing bid.
No. Carpet cleaning is steam, rooms, and pet urine. Flooring install is LVP, hardwood, and tile as hard-surface waste and tear-out. This prices a carpet installation: the floor yards, the stairs, the stretch-versus-glue scope, and extras.
Wondering whether the published $2-a-yard special actually covers a job? It does not even cover the carpet.