Ceiling Calculator

Twenty-four square metres with a 600 × 600 mm tile. The calculator returns 67 tiles, 7 main runners at 3.6 m, 34 cross tees at 1200 mm, 34 more at 600 mm, 7 lengths of wall angle at 3 m, and 20 hanger drops.

Each part comes from the grid rather than from a rule of thumb. Main runners go up every 1.2 m, so a 4 m width takes 4 runs; each run is 6 m long and comes in 3.6 m lengths, so that is 7 lengths. Wall angle is the perimeter — 20 m — divided by the 3 m it is sold in. Hangers are one every 1.2 m along each main.

The tile count uses the 0.36 m² module: 24 ÷ 0.36 is 66.7, rounded up to 67. Cross tees use a 0.72 m² cell, which is why there are 34 of each length rather than one number.

Ninety-six square metres with 600 × 1200 tiles: 134 tiles, 24 main runners, 134 cross tees at 1200 mm, 14 lengths of wall angle, 70 hangers — and ZERO cross tees at 600 mm. The results row says so in as many words: not used on a 600 x 1200 grid.

That is the whole point of the tile dropdown. A 1200 module is a different grid, not the same grid with longer tiles dropped into it. One of the two sets of cross tees simply stops existing, and if you had ordered from a 600 × 600 take-off you would have a pallet of 600 tees nobody can fit.

Everything else scales with the room rather than the tile: mains still run every 1.2 m, so eight metres of width is 7 runs, each 12 m long, which is 24 lengths at 3.6 m.

A corridor 20 metres by 1.8 is 36 m² — nowhere near the office above. It takes 100 tiles, 12 mains, 50 cross tees of each length, 34 hangers, and 15 lengths of wall angle.

Fifteen. The 96 m² office needed 14. A corridor of a third the area needs MORE wall angle than the office, because wall angle follows the perimeter and a long thin room has a huge perimeter for its floor: 43.6 metres around 36 m², against 40 metres around 96.

It is the single thing most often underestimated on corridors, lobbies and any room that is more shape than space. Tiles scale with area; edge trim scales with the walls, and the two come apart badly once a room stops being square.

Assuming the tile size only changes the tile count. It does not. Switch from 600 × 600 to 600 × 1200 and the count roughly halves — but you also stop needing one of the two sets of cross tees, because a 1200 module is a different grid, not the same grid with bigger tiles in it.

That is why the drawing beside the form redraws itself when you change that dropdown. A diagram showing a square grid next to a 2 × 4 selection would be quietly asserting the two jobs are the same, and the components list would be the thing that proved otherwise at the wholesaler.

Grid components are sold in fixed lengths, and this page has already converted to them: mains in 3.6 m, wall angle in 3 m, cross tees by the piece. Order in those units rather than in metres and there is nothing left to translate.

Say "tile" rather than "board" when you order. This page counts runners, cross tees, wall angle and hangers, which is a T-bar suspended grid. Ceiling board almost everywhere means plasterboard screwed to furring — no grid, no tees, and a completely different order.

The working gives the ceiling area, the perimeter, and the module and cell sizes it divided by. If your grid is set out differently — mains at other centres, or a border tile detail around the edge — those are the two lines to adjust from.

What this page deliberately does not give you is a load rating. Whether a grid will carry a light fitting, a speaker or an air diffuser depends on the manufacturer's own tested figures for that system, and inventing a number for it would be worse than not having one.