How much yarn does a 2x3 rug actually eat?
Area times a grams-per-square-foot rate — seeded from published guidance, replaced by your own finished-rug history — with trim waste in and cones rounded UP, because running out mid-rug means a dye-lot mismatch in the middle of the piece. Everything stays in your browser.
The rug
Your conventions
The numbers here are yours to check. This page does arithmetic on what you type — it cannot see your recipe, your equipment or your batch.
Want it to remember?
In MadeKeeper your cones are inventory by the gram: each rug consumes its real yarn at its real cost, and the commission quote starts from what the piece actually costs you. See for makers or poke around the live demo. $19/mo for the whole back office, kept for as long as you stay. The shop stays free for cost a piece and one fair — no product cap. The tax packet, Etsy and Square, and more fairs are the $19.
The question r/Tufting answers every single week
Yarn-per-rug is the most re-asked question in tufting, and the answer genuinely is 'it depends' — so the calculator names its seed, shows its work, and gets out of the way of your own history. The math below is what it runs.
How many grams of yarn per square foot?
The honest answer is a range, which is why everyone keeps asking: pile height, cut versus loop, and how many strands you feed the machine all move it. Published guidance and the community spreadsheets cluster around 200-250 g per square foot for cut pile and less for loop — this calculator seeds 230 cut and 160 loop, and the moment you weigh the cones before and after one finished rug, your own number replaces the seed and never moves again.
Why does cut pile use more yarn than loop?
Shearing. Cut pile gets tufted tall and then sheared flat, and everything the shears take off was yarn you paid for — that trim is also why the waste percentage exists as its own line. Loop pile keeps every loop it tufts. The difference is real money at cone prices, which is a fair thing to know before you promise a customer a velvet-dense cut-pile commission at a loop-pile price.
Why round cones UP instead of buying exactly enough?
Because yarn is dyed in lots, and two cones of the same color from different lots do not match — subtly on the cone, obviously in the middle of your rug. Under-ordering means finishing the piece with a stripe you didn't design. The extra cone is the cheapest insurance in the craft, and the leftover starts the next rug.
Does this cover backing cloth and glue?
The yarn is the number that varies enough to need a calculator; backing, glue and final backing are steadier per-square-foot costs you learn once. Cost the whole rug — yarn plus backing plus adhesive plus your time — before quoting a commission; the yarn figure here is the piece people get wrong.