About HandyFigures
HandyFigures makes free material calculators for DIY home and yard projects — and shows the math behind every answer.
Why this exists
Between us we've painted a lot of rooms, laid a lot of flooring, and hauled more bags of mulch than we care to count — and the most stressful moment of every project is still the same one: standing in the store aisle, guessing quantities. The calculators the big retailers offer answer one room at a time, hide their assumptions, and have a funny habit of rounding up. We wanted the opposite: a small set of calculators that plan the whole project, show every step of the arithmetic, and never ask who you are.
How we build our calculators
- Show the math. Every tool explains its exact formula, the standard allowances it uses (21 sq ft per door, 10–20% flooring waste by pattern, 27 cu ft to the yard), and where those numbers come from. You can check us with a pencil.
- Run everything in your browser. The calculators are 100% client-side. Your room sizes and prices are never uploaded, logged, or sold. Saved projects live in your own browser's storage.
- Round like the store sells. Gallons and quarts, whole boxes, whole bags. An estimate you can't buy isn't an estimate.
- Stay inside our lane. We do quantities and costs. How to build, wire, plumb or structure something is a different kind of question, and we say so rather than winging it.
Who's behind it
HandyFigures is built and maintained by a small independent team of DIYers (we publish under the brand name rather than personal names). We're not a retailer and we don't sell materials — which means we have no reason to round your order up. If a calculator gives a strange answer or a guide gets something wrong, we genuinely want to know: get in touch.
How we keep it free
The site costs very little to run, and the plan is to cover it with unobtrusive advertising and, in time, affiliate links to products we'd actually use. None of that changes what a calculator tells you. The details are on our Ad & Affiliate Disclosure page.