So, you have finally managed to choose the best artificial grass for your garden, and now you need to measure your lawn to see how much you will need.

If you intend to install your own artificial grass, then it’s vital you calculate accurately how much artificial grass you need so you can order enough to cover your lawn.

Understandably it can be a little daunting if you have never done it before.

There are many things to take into consideration and it is easy to measure your lawn incorrectly.

To help you avoid the pitfalls and calculate exactly how much artificial grass you’ll need to complete your project, we’ll walk you through the process step by step, showing you a basic example along the way.

But before we start with the step-by-step guide, there are certain things that you’ll need to bear in mind when measuring your lawn.

It’s very important to read these tips before attempting to measure your lawn. They will save you time in the long run and ensure that the process is as stress-free as possible.

6 Vitally Important Measuring Tips

1. Rolls are 4m and 2m in width, and up to 25m in length

When measuring your lawn, always bear in mind that we supply our artificial grass in rolls of 4m and 2m wide.

We can cut anything up to 25m in length, to the nearest 100mm, depending on how much you need.

When measuring your lawn, measure both the width and the length, and calculate the best way to lay your grass in order to minimise wastage.

2. Always, always measure both the widest and the longest points of your lawn

When measuring your lawn, be sure to measure both the widest and the longest points to see whether you’ll need more than one roll of artificial turf.

For lawns that are curved, this tip is especially important.

If you’ll need to use, say, two rolls side-by-side to cover the width, mark out where your join will lie and then measure the length for each roll. Unless your garden has perfect 90-degree corners, then even if it’s roughly square or oblong, the chances are one roll will need to be a little longer than the other.

Please see example 3 below for further information.

3. Consider extending beds to minimise wastage

Say your lawn measures 4.2m x 4.2m; the only way to cover this area would be to order 2 rolls of artificial grass, one measuring 4m x 4.2m and the other measuring 2m x 4.2m.

This would result in approximately 7.5m² of wastage.

Therefore, you’d save a significant amount of money by extending or creating a plant bed along one edge, to reduce one of the measurements to 4m. That way you’d need just one 4m wide roll, 4.2m long.

Bonus Tip: to create a low maintenance plant bed, lay some slate or decorative stone on top of weed membrane. You can also put plant pots on top to add in some green.

4. Allow 100mm at either end of each roll, to allow for cutting and errors.

After you have measured your lawn and calculated how long your rolls need to be, you’ll need to add an additional 100mm of grass at each end to allow for cutting and measuring errors.

We can cut our grass to the nearest 100mm and we strongly advise adding 100mm to each end of the artificial grass so if you make a mistake with cutting, you should still have enough for another attempt at cutting it in.

It also allows a little room for measuring errors.

As an example, if your lawn measures 6m x 6m, order 2 rolls, one measuring 2m x 6.2m, and the other, 4m x 6.2m.

You don’t need to allow any additional for the width as our 4m and 2m wide rolls are in actual fact 4.1m and 2.05m, which allows for trimming 3 stitches off the artificial grass to form an invisible join.

5. Consider the weight of the grass

When ordering artificial grass, always consider the weight of the rolls.

You can find details of the weights of our products on our website.

Rather than ordering a 4m x 10m roll of grass, you may find it easier to order 2 rolls of 2m x 10m, as they will be much lighter to carry.

Alternatively, you might be better off laying your grass across your lawn rather than up and down it, or vice versa, to enable the use of smaller, lighter rolls.

Of course, it depends on the weight of the artificial grass, but as a general rule, the most two men can lift together is about 30m² of grass on one roll.

Any more than that and you’d need a third helper or a carpet barrow to lift your grass into position.

6. Consider which way the pile direction will face

When you look closely at artificial grass, you’ll notice that it has a slight pile direction. This is true of all artificial grass, regardless of quality.

This is important to remember for two reasons.

Firstly, in an ideal world, the pile of your artificial grass will be facing towards the angle you’ll be viewing it from the most, i.e. you’ll be looking into the pile.

This is generally considered to be the most aesthetically pleasing angle and it usually means the pile faces towards your house and/or patio area.

Secondly, when measuring your lawn you’ll need to remember that if you need to use more than one roll of artificial grass, both pieces will need to be facing in the same direction to form an invisible join.

If the pile direction isn’t facing the same way on both pieces of grass, each roll will appear to be a slightly different colour.

This is extremely important to remember if you are going to be using offcuts to fill in certain areas of your lawn.

Therefore, always bear in mind the pile direction when measuring your lawn.

How to Measure Your Garden for an Artificial Lawn – Step-by-Step Guide

Now that we have covered those important points, let’s take a look at a basic example.

What You’ll Need to Measure Your Lawn

Before you start measuring your lawn you’ll need the following items to hand:

-Sheet of Paper

-Pencil

-Rubber

-Tape Measure (at least 5m in length)

Step 1 – Measure the width of your lawn

One of the most important things to remember when calculating your artificial grass requirements is to measure across the widest part of your lawn.

Artificial grass is supplied in rolls of 2m and 4m wide.

In an ideal world, you would be able to use every bit of your roll of grass without having any wastage left over.

However, in the real world, it’s quite likely that you will have some form of wastage.

To begin, using your tape measure, measure from one side of your lawn to the other, as shown in the diagram below.

Now, it’s worth mentioning again, but always measure the widest part of your lawn. This example is very straightforward, but your lawn is very unlikely to be perfectly square.

As you can see, in this instance our measurement is 6m. So, if we were to lay our grass running down the garden, we would need 2 rolls of artificial grass, one at 4m and another at 2m.

Step 2 – Measure the length of your lawn

Once you’ve measured the width of your lawn, we now need to measure the length to see what we have here.

In the below example we also have 6m on the length. This suggests that we’ll need to order 2 rolls of artificial grass, each 6m in length.

However, we always recommend that you allow 100mm at each end of your artificial grass to allow you to cut a neat edge to your artificial lawn, and it also allows you to make a mistake or two in the process. Therefore you’d order rolls that were 6.2m in length.

Remember, our 4m and 2m wide rolls are in actual fact 4.1m and 2.05m, which allows for trimming 3 stitches off the artificial grass to form an invisible join.

Step 3 – Mark where your joins will lie

The next step is to mark exactly where your joins will lie.

So, assuming you are laying your artificial grass down the length of your lawn, measure again across the widest point and mark where each join will be by measuring in either 4m or 2m from one edge, depending on the size of the rolls you’ll be using on your project.

You can mark your lawn with spray paint, a stick, or anything that will clearly mark where your join will lie.

In the below example, our corners are exactly 90 degrees, so we will need two pieces of exactly the same length.

However, when measuring your own lawn, you might find that if you need to order two rolls of grass, you need to buy them in different lengths. In the below example, by marking where your joins lie, you can measure exactly how long each roll of artificial grass will need to be.

Example 2

Of course, its very rare that your lawn will be as straightforward to measure as the above example.

So lets take a look at another example, which shows a slightly more realistic situation.

Here, the same steps described above have been followed.

With this example, wastage is inevitable. However, the wastage can be put to good use to fill in a small area of the lawn.

When attempting to use wastage it’s vital to remember tip #5 from above. The pile direction of the offcut will need to face in the same direction as the rest of the artificial grass, which in this example, it does.

Therefore, for this project you’d order 2 rolls of 4m x 11.2m.

Example 3

Our final example highlights tip #2: always measure the widest and longest part of your lawn.

If you’ll need more than one piece of grass to cover your lawn, mark exactly where the join will lie and then measure across the widest or down the longest part of your lawn – depending on whether the grass is being laid from left to right or up and down your garden – for both rolls of grass.

In this example, you’d need to order 4m x 6.7m and 2m x 3.7m.

Conclusion

Measuring your lawn for artificial grass is maybe not as straightforward as you might have first thought.

But as long as you take into consideration everything in this article, you shouldn’t have any problems and your artificial grass project should run without any hiccups.

If all of this sounds like too much hard work, why not let one of our installer take all the stress way by doing the work for you?

Their work is regularly vetted and they will be able to handle everything from start to finish, leaving you to relax and enjoy the many benefits having an artificial lawn brings.

If you would like any help measuring your lawn, leave us a message in website so that we can contact you as soon as possible.