Wallpaper Calculator UK · metric

Rolls of wallpaper by wall area and pattern repeat. Metric units and £ costs, updated for 2026.

Last reviewed July 2026 · Free · Nothing you enter is stored

How this calculator works

A standard UK roll is 10.05 m × 0.52 m (about 5.2 m² gross). Usable coverage is roughly 5 m² with no repeat, 4.3 m² for a small repeat and 3.7 m² for a large one, once you allow for trimming and pattern matching. Rolls = area ÷ usable coverage.

The waste allowance

Wallpaper waste is not a percentage you sprinkle on at the end; it is built into how the material is cut. A roll is divided into full-height drops, and every drop that has to align with its neighbour loses material at the top or bottom to bring the pattern into register. The longer the repeat, the more comes off. Worse, the waste does not pool: the offcut left at the bottom of a roll after the last full drop is almost never long enough to be another drop, and a part-drop from one wall usually cannot be carried to the next because the pattern will not line up where it meets. So the useful allowance is expressed in drops rather than square metres, and it is rounded up roll by roll rather than once at the end. On top of that, order at least one spare roll from the same batch number. Farrow & Ball give exactly that advice, and repairs years later are effectively impossible without it.

What is actually on a British roll

The standard roll sold in Britain is the European roll: nominally 10.05 metres long and 53 centimetres wide, which is about 5.3 square metres of paper gross. That is the unit almost every wallpaper in a British shop comes in, and it is a completely different system from the American single and double roll. There is no useful conversion between the two, so ignore any figure quoted in square feet and work from the metric roll.

The nominal figure is also quoted inconsistently, and it is worth knowing that before you place an order. Farrow & Ball state that every roll is 10 metres long and 53 centimetres wide. Graham & Brown say simply that a roll of wallpaper is 52 or 53 centimetres wide, and sell papers listed at 10 m by 52 cm. Trade guidance commonly gives 10.05 m by 52 to 53 cm and about 5.2 square metres. Those are all describing the same roll, rounded differently, but a centimetre of width changes how many widths fit across a wall and five centimetres of length can be the difference between four clean drops and three.

The practical instruction is therefore simple. Do not plan from a general figure if you can avoid it. The roll length, the width, the pattern repeat and the match type for the specific paper you are buying are printed on the label and on the product page, and those are the numbers to work from. The general roll size is for sanity-checking an order, not for placing one.

Work in drops, not in square metres

This is the single most useful shift in how to think about a wallpaper order. Paper is hung as full-height vertical drops cut from the roll. What you need is a count of drops, and then a count of how many drops each roll yields, and both of those are whole numbers.

Drops per wall is the wall length divided by the usable width of the roll, rounded up. Usable width is a little under the printed 53 centimetres, because the edges are trimmed and adjacent drops are butted. Drops per roll is the roll length divided by the cut length of each drop, where the cut length is the ceiling height plus a trimming allowance at top and bottom, plus whatever the pattern demands. On a typical 2.4 metre ceiling with a 100 millimetre allowance at each end, the cut length is around 2.6 metres and a 10.05 metre roll gives three drops with a good deal left over, or four if the ceiling is lower and the paper is a free match.

Area arithmetic fails here because area is divisible and drops are not. Five square metres of paper does not cover five square metres of wall if it arrives in the wrong shape, and it arrives in the wrong shape as soon as a pattern is involved. This is why ordering by total square metres systematically under-orders, and why the shortfall is worst in rooms with several short walls, chimney breasts and alcoves, where every internal corner forces a fresh drop and strands the remainder of the last one.

Pattern repeat and match type, and what they cost you

The pattern repeat is the vertical distance before the design starts again, and it is printed on the label in centimetres. To make the pattern continue across a seam, each drop has to start at the same point in the repeat as its neighbour, which means cutting away part of a repeat at the top of most drops. A long repeat means a longer offcut on every drop, and those offcuts accumulate quickly across a room.

Farrow & Ball put real numbers to this in their own guidance, and they are the clearest illustration available. They quote four drops per roll for a striped paper such as Closet Stripe, three drops per roll for a small repeat such as Samphire, and two drops per roll for a large repeat such as Helleborus. That is a halving of the useful yield of a roll purely on account of the pattern, on the same 10 metre roll and the same wall. Trade guidance makes the same point from the other direction: a 64 centimetre repeat on a 2.4 metre ceiling can drop a roll from four usable drops to three.

The match type matters as much as the repeat length. A free match or random match needs no alignment at all and wastes very little beyond trimming, which is why plain papers and some textures go so much further. A straight match aligns the same point on every drop across the seam. An offset or drop match staggers alternate drops by half a repeat, so the cut lengths alternate and the arithmetic changes again. Check which one you have bought before you cut anything, because you cannot tell by looking at a single drop.

Batch numbers, lining paper, and ordering once

Wallpaper is printed in production runs, and colour varies subtly between them. Each run carries a batch number. Farrow & Ball are candid that their traditional printing techniques mean the pattern and colour can differ very slightly between batches. Two rolls of the same paper from different batches can look identical in the hand and read as an obvious vertical line on the wall in daylight, because the eye is extremely good at spotting a small step change in colour along a straight edge.

The consequence is that a wallpaper order is effectively a single event. Ordering short and topping up later is not the same as ordering enough at the start, and by the time you find the shortfall the original batch may be gone. Order the full quantity in one go, check that the rolls share a batch number when they arrive, and add a spare beyond what the calculator returns. Farrow & Ball recommend adding one more roll than you estimate, and that is sound advice whoever made the paper.

One more British habit worth budgeting for. If the walls are uneven, previously painted with a strong colour, or newly plastered, the trade approach is to hang lining paper first, and to hang it horizontally so that its seams cannot coincide with the seams of the wallpaper. That is called cross-lining. Lining paper is graded by weight, commonly 800, 1000, 1200, 1400, 1700 and 2000, with 800 the thinnest and 2000 the heaviest for walls with real defects. It comes in the same 53 centimetre width but in longer rolls, often 20 metres, so it is a separate order rather than an extension of the wallpaper one.

Drops per roll, and why the same roll yields different amounts

Every figure below is for the same standard British roll. What changes is the pattern, and it changes the useful yield by a factor of two. Treat these as orientation and confirm the repeat and match type on the label of the paper you are buying.

Roll dimensions and drops per roll from Farrow & Ball's own wallpaper quantity guidance (10 m by 53 cm; four drops for a stripe such as Closet Stripe, three for a small repeat such as Samphire, two for a large repeat such as Helleborus; add one roll beyond your estimate). Roll width of 52 to 53 cm as stated by Graham & Brown. The 10.05 m by 52 to 53 cm nominal roll and the note that a 64 cm repeat on a 2.4 m ceiling can reduce a roll from four drops to three are from UK trade estimating guidance. Lining paper grades 800 to 2000 and the practice of cross-lining are from Homebuilding & Renovating. No manufacturer publishes a waste-percentage-by-repeat table, so the allowance this calculator applies is judgement rather than a standard.

What goes wrong when ordering wallpaper

Ordering by total square metres. Area is divisible and drops are not. Dividing wall area by the 5.3 m² on a roll systematically under-orders, and the shortfall is worst in rooms with several short walls, alcoves and a chimney breast.

Mixing batch numbers. Colour varies between production runs and Farrow & Ball say so themselves. Rolls from different batches can look identical off the wall and show as an obvious vertical line once hung. Order everything at once and check the batch numbers on arrival.

Ignoring the repeat and the match type. A large repeat can halve the drops you get from a roll, from four down to two on the same wall. The repeat length and whether the paper is free, straight or offset match are printed on the label and change the cut length of every drop.

Using American roll figures. The American single and double roll is a different unit system entirely and does not convert usefully to the 10.05 m by 53 cm European roll. Any figure quoted in square feet belongs to a different paper and a different market.

Ordering exactly enough. Add a spare roll from the same batch. Drops get mis-cut, corners go wrong, and a repair a few years later is close to impossible without matching paper already in the cupboard.

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