During repairs, a situation may arise when it is necessary to know the exact perimeter of the room, for example, when buying a skirting board or when calculating the amount of wallpaper and flooring. This is easy to do if the room has a standard shape. But what if we need to make a calculation for a corridor that has many corners, or for an unusually shaped bedroom? In this process, some tricks will help, which you can resort to when renovation planning.
Calculation for standard rooms: square and rectangle
Most often there are rooms whose walls form a rectangle or square. In this case, we need:
- roulette;
- ruler;
- thread;
- paper and pencil.
First, let's remember what a perimeter is. This is a geometric value, which is the sum of the lengths of all sides of the figure. It is even easier to calculate than floor area.
The simplest case is a room that is a square, that is, all its sides are equal. Then we measure one side of the square by attaching a tape measure to the junction of the wall and floor.
If you don't have a tape measure, use a piece of string to measure the distance from corner to corner of the room and measure it with a ruler.
The desired value can be calculated by multiplying the measurement result by 4. So, for a bedroom that has the shape of a square with a side equal to 5 meters, the perimeter will be equal to:
5 x 4 = 20 (m)
It's a little more interesting when the room is a rectangle. This means that the lengths of opposite walls are equal to each other. In this case, we measure the distance from the corner to the corner of two adjacent walls with a tape measure, add the resulting numbers together and multiply by 2. For clarity, consider an example: given a rectangular living room, the length of one of its walls is 5 meters, the other is 5.5 m. Then perimeter will be:
(5 + 5.5) x 2 = 21 (m)
Do not forget that even with an accurate calculation of the amount of building materials, they need to be bought with a small margin in case of damage.
Non-standard options: polygon and circle
It is easy to calculate the perimeter when the opposite sides of the figure are equal to each other. Let's complicate the situation: the existing kitchen has more than four corners. In this case, you will have to measure each segment from one corner to another, and then add up all the measurement results. This method differs from the previous one in that in order to calculate the perimeter, more initial data is needed.
Take a kitchen that has the shape of a hexagon with a niche. Then the number of walls that we have to measure, then adding up the obtained values, will be equal to 8.
Let's complicate the situation even more: the hall is a circle. Measuring from corner to corner will not help here, since they simply do not exist. If there is confidence that this is really a circle, and not an ellipse, then knowledge of geometry will help. The perimeter is the length of a circle. And the circumference, in turn, is the product of the diameter of the circle by the number π.
It sounds scary, but it's actually quite simple.
- Find the center of the room and label it.
- We fix the thread at one wall and draw it to the opposite through the center of the room.
- We measure the length of the resulting segment. This is the diameter of the circle.
Now we need to count. We take the resulting diameter and multiply by the number π. Everyone knows that this number is infinitely large. But we do not need accuracy to hundredths of a millimeter, so we take 3.14. Thus, the perimeter of a circle is the length of the segment from wall to wall through the middle of the room, multiplied by 3.14.
So, having a round room with a diameter of 5 meters, we get the value we need as follows:
5 x 3.14 = 15.7 (m)
Helpful Hints
What to do if you absolutely do not want to count or have no desire to crawl around the room, measuring out the walls with a tape measure? There are some helpful tips:
- Take a laser tape measure from a friend. With this device, it will be possible to take all the measurements yourself, unlike a tape measure, which requires a friend to hold its end. In addition, the device will give a more accurate result, since the laser beam will not be deflected. This will help to more accurately calculate the perimeter of the room.
- Use a long thread.It will be much more convenient to attach parts of the thread to the corners without interrupting the measurement. The thread should unwind until it meets its own end - the beginning of the measurement. Its final length is the desired value. This method will help if there is a room that has the shape of an ellipse, since it will be problematic to calculate the length of this figure in a different way.
Thus, in a short time, you can carry out all the necessary measurements and get the finished result. However, it is worth remembering that as a result, an error must be taken into account so as not to purchase building materials less than necessary. For example, if the wall is uneven, even with accurate calculations, more plinth will be needed in the end to smooth out the imperfections.
