Gift Wrap Paper Calculator

About this calculator

This calculator finds the wrapping paper dimensions needed to fully cover a rectangular box: the sheet's length wraps around the box's girth (twice the width plus twice the height) with 2 cm added for the overlap, and its width covers the box's length plus about three-quarters of the shorter end-face side (width or height) at each end, enough for the end flaps to fold over and meet. It also reports the sheet's area, which is deliberately larger than the box's bare surface area 2(lw + lh + wh), because the folds and the overlap use paper too.

Retail gift-wrapping counters and warehouse packaging teams use this kind of sizing to cut paper to standard box dimensions with minimal waste, and it's just as useful at home for figuring out whether a roll of wrapping paper will stretch around an oddly sized present before you start cutting and end up short.