Artificial turf calculator

Infill is most of the weight of this job and the published rates for it do not follow from pile height, whatever the volume formula says. Enter your lawn and this gives you the infill against its published band, plus the turf both ways round.

Area length Area width Which one you call length does not matter — the answer is the same either way round, because both orientations are worked out and the cheaper one is used. Roll width Two suppliers we checked publish different widths: 15 ft on a 100 ft roll, and 12 ft in 25 to 75 ft lengths. Neither is an industry standard, so read yours off the spec sheet — the same lawn can need a different amount at each. Pile height The blade length on the spec sheet. Here it only looks up the published rate band shown below — it is not used to calculate the infill, because the published rates do not follow from pile height geometrically. Infill rate, lb per sq ft This is the number to get right, and it comes off your product, not off a formula. Published rates for coated sand (Envirofill): 1.5-2.5 lb/sq ft at a 1 to 1-1/4 in pile, 2.5-3.5 at 1-1/2 to 1-3/4, 3.5-4.5 at 1-7/8 to 2-1/4, and only 0.25-0.5 for a top-dressed putting green. Walnut-shell infill over the same piles is about half: 0.75-1.25, 1.25-1.75, 1.75-2.25. The default is the middle of the 2.5-3.5 band. Infill bag weight lb Read it off your own bag. The installation guidelines this page cites talk about bags, pallets and super sacks but never state a weight, so we cannot give you one — and the bag count is what you actually carry. Extra roll length for trimming % 5% for squaring the ends and trimming to edges. The offcut from the roll width is counted separately below — this is on top of it, and a curved or angled lawn wants more.

Turf to buy 630 sqft Roll width x the length you order. You cannot buy less than a full width.

Roll length to order 42 ft Linear feet. This is what the counter asks for — square feet alone will not buy anything.

Same lawn, rolls run the other way 945 sqft The orientation this calculator did not pick. The gap is what you save by planning the direction.

Seams 1 One fewer than the number of strips. Every one needs jointing tape and adhesive.

Offcut left over 30 sqft

Infill 1,800 lb At your rate, over the installed area rather than the roll area.

Infill bags 36 bags

Published rate for this pile, low 2.5 lb per sq ft, coated sand, from the published band for your pile height.

Published rate for this pile, high 3.5 The other end of the same band. Blank outside a 1 to 2-1/4 in pile, which is where the published table starts and stops. If the rate you entered sits outside these two, check it against your own product sheet.

Infill: the rate is a product measurement, not a calculation

Infill is most of the weight of this job, and the tempting way to get it is by working out a volume: take the pile height, halve it, call that the infill depth, multiply by area, multiply by a density. That method is even written down by one of the suppliers.

It disagrees with that same supplier's own published rates, and you can see it without knowing any densities. The Motz Group's infill guide states the method as "divide the pile height of the turf by two ... to get the number of required cubic feet". For a 1-3/4 in pile that is an infill depth of 0.875 in. The table on the same page, in the row for that very pile height, gives the depth as 1/2 to 3/4 in. The method overshoots the table before a density is even applied — and once one is, the published pound figures come out roughly twice what the rate table says.

So this page does not calculate the rate. It asks for it, and shows you the published band for your pile so you can check what you typed:

Pile height	Coated sand (Envirofill)	Walnut shell (Safeshell)
1 – 1-1/4 in, pet & playground	1.5 – 2.5 lb/sq ft	0.75 – 1.25
1-1/2 – 1-3/4 in, landscape	2.5 – 3.5	1.25 – 1.75
1-7/8 – 2-1/4 in, landscape	3.5 – 4.5	1.75 – 2.25
1 – 1-1/4 in putting green, top dressed	0.25 – 0.5	—

Two things in that table are worth more than the numbers. First, walnut shell weighs about half what coated sand does over the same pile — so the rate is a property of the product in the bag, not of the turf. Second, a top-dressed putting green takes a twentieth of what the same pile height takes as a playground. Neither of those can be recovered from a depth formula, which is exactly why the formula is the wrong tool.

The gap between the two approaches does not need a density to see. For a 1-3/4 in pile the halve-the-pile method starts from an infill depth of 0.875 in against the table's own 1/2 to 3/4 in — so it is running 1.2 to 1.75 times high before anyone picks a density, and picking one only compounds it. Start from the rate instead and the density never enters the sum.

One figure that is not in dispute and is worth having: installation loss is "less than 1% if installed properly". Infill waste is not what inflates this job.

Why this page prints more than one product's rate. It has nothing to sell you. The table above sets one manufacturer's coated sand against that same manufacturer's walnut-shell infill, and both against a second published source for the same material — and it prints the spread rather than resolving it, because the spread is the finding. If the bag in your driveway carries a rate, that is the number to use. What this page can add is how far the published figures sit from one another before you pick one.

Where these numbers come from, and what they do not cover. Both sources here are Motz-affiliated — the rate table and the Envirofill installation guidelines are two views of one supply chain, not two independent manufacturers, and we could not obtain published rates from anyone else. Figures circulating for raw silica sand appear only in installer blog posts rather than in any published specification, so none is given here. Crumb rubber, zeolite and cork we could not source at all, and they are not covered. If your bag carries a rate, it beats everything on this page.

What the published band can and cannot tell you

The band shown beside the answer is a lookup, not a calculation, and three things about it are worth knowing before you check your rate against it.

Pile height alone does not identify a rate. Look again at the table: a 1 to 1-1/4 in pile takes 1.5 – 2.5 lb/sq ft as a pet or playground surface and 0.25 – 0.5 top-dressed as a putting green. That is a twentieth of the material at the same blade length. The lookup keys on the pile height only, so on a putting green it will show you the playground band. The infill total is unaffected — it uses the rate you typed, which is the reason the rate is an input.
The edges between the bands are ours, not the supplier's. The published rows are 1 to 1-1/4, 1-1/2 to 1-3/4 and 1-7/8 to 2-1/4 in, and nothing is published for the gaps in between them. A 1-3/8 in pile sits in one of those gaps, so the lookup splits each gap at its midpoint: at 1-3/8 in you are still shown the band below, and a hair above it you are shown the band above. That split is a convention chosen to avoid inventing a rate, not a figure anyone published.
Outside 1 to 2-1/4 in the two rate outputs go blank. That is where the published table starts and stops, and an extrapolated band would look exactly like a sourced one on the page. Below a 1 in pile and above a 2-1/4 in one there is nothing to check your rate against, so the page shows nothing rather than a number it cannot stand behind. The infill total still comes out, because it is your rate that drives it.

And the direction you roll it is worth 300 square feet

Turf is a roll of fixed width. You cannot buy 8 ft of a 15 ft roll — you buy the full width and cut. So a lawn has exactly two answers, and they are not close.

Take a 20 × 30 ft yard and a 15 ft roll:

Run the strips 20 ft long, two of them across the 30 ft side: 40 linear ft, so 15 × 40 = 600 sq ft. The lawn is 600 sq ft. Nothing left over.
Run them 30 ft long, two across the 20 ft side: 60 linear ft, so 15 × 60 = 900 sq ft — and 300 sq ft of it goes in the skip.

Same lawn, same roll, 50% more turf for turning the drawing sideways. The rule is short enough to check by hand:

buy = W × min( B × ceil(A ÷ W), A × ceil(B ÷ W) )

Two other things fall out of it that a square-foot total will not tell you. Order in linear feet — the counter sells 15 ft × n ft, and asking for "600 square feet" gets you a blank look. And count the seams: strips minus one. Each is jointing tape and adhesive, and each is a line you will see across the lawn for as long as you own it, so it is worth choosing which direction it runs in as well as how many there are.

Roll width is one supplier's standard, not a fact

Two product sheets, two widths:

Greatmats "La Jolla" — "standard width of 15 feet", full roll "100 linear feet", 1,500 sq ft, sold by the square foot, "available in custom cut lengths".
USA Turf Pros "USA Grand Slam" — "12 Feet Wide", stocked in 25, 35, 55 and 75 ft lengths, sold by linear footage.

So fifteen feet is not a standard the way a 4 × 8 sheet is, and the width is a field above rather than baked in. On a 13 × 20 ft lawn the difference is not academic: at 12 ft you buy 312 sq ft laid one way and 480 laid the other, and at 15 ft the whole 13 ft width comes off a single strip.

Notice the second difference in that pair, because it will trip you at the counter: one is priced by the square foot and the other by the linear foot. They are not interchangeable numbers — 40 linear feet of a 15 ft roll is 600 square feet — and below a full roll you are buying a cut length, whose price per square foot may not match the full-roll price. Ask before you compare quotes.

What this does not size

Base depth, seam tape and stakes. We could not find published installation figures for any of the three, and would rather leave them out than invent them. Your turf supplier's own installation sheet is the place to get them, and it will be specific to their backing and your soil.

Questions people ask

How much artificial turf do I need for a 20 x 30 ft yard?

600 sq ft if you run 15 ft rolls the efficient way — two strips 20 ft long — which happens to be exactly the lawn area with no offcut. Run them the other way and you buy 900 sq ft for the same yard. Add about 5% for trimming.

How much infill do I need per square foot?

It depends on the product, not on the pile height, so read it off your bag. Published rates for coated sand run 1.5-2.5 lb per sq ft at a 1 to 1-1/4 in pile, 2.5-3.5 at 1-1/2 to 1-3/4 and 3.5-4.5 at 1-7/8 to 2-1/4. Walnut-shell infill over the same piles is about half. Beware any calculator that works it out by halving the pile height and multiplying by a density — that method overshoots its own supplier's published table by about two times.

Why does the direction of the rolls change how much I buy?

Because you buy the full roll width whatever you use of it. Covering a 20 ft dimension with a 15 ft roll takes two strips and wastes 10 ft of width; covering a 30 ft dimension takes two strips and wastes nothing. The strip length changes with it, and the two orientations can differ by 50%.

Do I need infill at all?

For anything walked on, yes. It ballasts the turf against movement and wrinkling, holds the blades upright, protects the backing from UV and gives the surface some cushion. Non-infill turf exists for small decorative areas, but on a lawn the infill is what stops it looking flat and moving underfoot.

How many seams will I have?

One fewer than the number of strips. A 20 x 30 ft lawn in 15 ft turf is two strips and one seam. Plan where it lands — down the middle of a lawn it will be visible for years, whereas along an edge or under a path it will not.

Last reviewed 2026-07-31