What is a Linear Foot and How to Calculate It

Have you ever looked at instructions and thought to yourself, how much is a linear foot? Put simply, a linear foot is 12 inches in a straight line. Using the term “linear” indicates that you are measuring in a straight line. Anytime you measure something in a straight line in the United States, you’re measuring how long that thing is in linear feet.

Linear feet differ from square feet and cubic feet, though. And whether you’re measuring your yard, your moving truck, or the length of your fence, it’s important to know how and when to use these different measurements. Taking proper measurements is also an essential part of filling out a home inventory for your moving company.

Here's all there is to know about linear feet, square feet, and cubic feet. Along the way, we’ll also throw in a few conversion charts to help with all the math you’ll need to measure your stuff correctly.

If you have a ruler or a measuring tape with markings in one-inch increments, you’re ready to measure anything in linear feet. Remember, a linear foot is 12 inches in a straight line.

If you measure something and it’s 12 inches long, it’s one linear foot in length. If it’s 24 inches long, that’s two linear feet, etc. The nice thing is that most tape measures have markings for feet as well as inches, so you may not even need to do the calculations yourself.

But just in case your measuring tape doesn’t have markings for feet or you’re using a 12-inch ruler for all your measurements, here’s a handy linear foot calculator to make the math easy:

Of course, not all measurements can be nicely divided by 12. For example, if your dining table is 63 inches long, you won’t be able to write down its dimensions using only feet.

For situations like this, find the closest number divisible by 12 to the object’s length, calculate how many feet that is and write it down, and then write down how many inches are left over. The length of the table from our example would be written as “5 feet 3 inches” or “5′3″.”

Use linear feet to measure anything in a straight line. If you need to know the length of a rug, the width of a bookcase, or the height of your child, linear feet will do the trick.

Square footage measures the area of a flat surface. It can tell you the size of your yard, the floor space your bed will take up, and the wall space you’ll need for all your concert posters.

When calculating square footage, you use linear feet as part of the math.

To begin finding the square footage of an object or space, measure its length in linear feet. Then, measure it in one other direction. You only need to take two measurements to find square footage, but which measurements you should take depends on what you’re measuring.

To find a wall’s square footage, measure its length and its height. Similarly, to know how much wall space a piece of decor or furniture will take up, measure its length and its height. To find the square footage of your kitchen floor or learn how much floor space something will take up, measure its width and its length.

Once you have these two measurements, multiply them by each other. The product is the object’s or space’s square footage. For example, if your garage is 10 feet wide and 16 feet long, the area of your garage floor is 160 square feet.

The math for calculating square feet can be a bit trickier than measuring linear feet, so you’ll probably need a calculator, but here’s a conversion chart that illustrates how to do it:

Use square feet whenever you need to know the total area of a flat surface or the footprint of a piece of furniture. Square footage can tell you how big a rug is, how much floor space your coffee table will take up in your living room, or how large your patio is.

Cubic footage is used to calculate a container’s volume and how much room an object will occupy in a container. In short, it can tell you how much stuff you can fit into things like boxes, cabinets, rooms, moving trucks, and storage units.

To find the cubic footage of a space or an object, you’ll once again start by determining how much is a linear foot (12 inches) and using a linear foot calculator like the table above. This time, though, you’ll measure in all three directions: length, width, and height.

Once you have all three dimensions, you’ll multiply them together. The product is the cubic footage. For example, if a moving truck’s cargo compartment is 10 feet long, 6 feet wide, and 6 feet high, the compartment is 360 cubic feet in volume.

Now, the numbers involved in cubic feet get pretty big, and the math can be a little too tricky to quickly do in your head, so use a calculator when trying to find an object's cubic footage. To illustrate exactly how to do this, here are a few examples:

Measure in cubic footage whenever you need to know how much a container can hold or how much space an object will take up inside a container.

For example, finding the cubic footage of your moving truck, storage unit, or moving and storage container is the only way to know exactly how much stuff you can put in them. Of course, you’ll also want to know the cubic footage of everything you plan to put inside these containers to ensure it’ll all fit.

Looking up measuring info because you’re planning a move and need to know how big your stuff is? These resources can help you plan and prepare for moving day:

• The Only Moving Checklist You’ll Ever Need
• What’s the Right Moving Truck Size for Your Move?
•  How to Estimate the Storage Unit Size You Need
• What Size Moving Container Do You Need?
• Best Moving Companies
• Best Long-Distance Moving Companies