While deciding between turtles metal wall sculptures or metal wall accent mirror is mainly a matter of personal preference, before buying carpet for your stairs, it is important to measure the stairs properly to know how much carpet you need to buy. Buying too much will be a waste while buying too little will make it difficult to stretch or cover the area only partially. A common mistake in measuring carpet is simply measuring the width and the length of the stair and multiplying it by the number of stairs. When measuring, it is important to take the risers as well as the lip of the risers into account. In order to properly measure the stairs for carpet, you will need a tape measure, pen, and paper.

Measuring the length
Begin at the top of the staircase, measuring the length of the steps. First, measure the rise of the stair step, which is the portion of the step that is actually stepped on. To do this, the measuring tape must be placed at the very depth of the stair step and stretch across to the very tip. Next measure the fall of the step, which is the backing of the step. To do this, the tape measure should be positioned at the joint of the immediate step and then stretched upwards. Add the measurement of the rise to the measurement of the fall. Add an additional two inches to the sum of the rise and fall measurement to account for padding and the curvature of the step. Count the number of stairs that have the exact dimensions as the one that you measured and multiply the number of the total measurement to the number of steps. Measure the rise and falls of any other steps that has a different dimension the same way that you measured the first step; make sure that you do add two inches to the step and multiply it to the number of steps with the exact same size. To calculate the total, add all the sums of the various sizes.

Measuring the width
In measuring the width, start with the widest step of the staircase. Although there may be different widths, you will only need to measure the widest one as the width of the carpet will be cut according to the widest step. When purchasing carpeting, the width can't be cut individually. Position the measuring tape on one side of your wall, stretching it across up to the other side of your wall. Add an additional two inches to the width measurement to account for padding.

Measuring straight stairs
If your stairs have uniformly sized steps, all with the exact same dimensions, you can stretch the measuring tape or ruler on one entire step starting at the inside edge of the tread and over the outside of the tread, down along the riser and up to the top of the next tread. Add an additional of two inches to the measurement and then multiply the number of steps, leaving out the last riser on the very top of the landing. Measure the landings and add it to the tread measurement adding one more inch to be turned in at the ends. To determine how many number of yards of carpet runner you require, divide the total by 36.