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Paint calculator
Work out how many litres a room needs, allowing for the coats you intend to put on and for the doors and windows you are not painting.
Your details
Measure the room and say how many coats.
In metres.
In metres.
In metres.
Each taken as 1.8 m².
Each taken as 1.5 m².
The sum behind it
Add up the wall area, take off the doors and windows, add the ceiling if you are painting it, multiply by the number of coats and divide by the coverage on the tin. Most matt emulsions cover about twelve square metres per litre per coat.
Where estimates go wrong
Three things catch people out. New plaster needs a thinned mist coat first and absorbs far more than a painted wall. Deep colours, particularly reds and yellows, often need three coats. And buying two small tins rather than one large one costs noticeably more per litre.