Running out of a color halfway through a rug — with no more of that dye lot available — is every tufter's nightmare. Estimating yarn well before you start is the single best way to avoid it. The amount you need comes down to three things: the area of the rug, the pile height, and the density of your tufting.
The three variables
Area. More surface means more yarn, in direct proportion. A 3×5 ft rug needs roughly 2.5× the yarn of a 2×3 ft one.
Pile height. Taller pile means each stitch pulls more yarn through the backing. Going from a low 8mm pile to a plush 20mm pile can nearly double consumption.
Density. How tightly you pack your rows and stitches. A dense, "no cloth showing" rug uses noticeably more yarn than a looser one.
Because these interact, a flat "yards per square foot" rule is only a rough guide. Our tufting calculator combines them — and, uniquely, reads a rug image to estimate yardage per color, so you know how much of each shade to buy.
Ballpark figures
As a starting point for a medium-density, medium-pile cut-pile rug, plan on roughly 250–400 grams of yarn per square foot, depending on pile height and yarn weight. A 2×3 ft (6 sq ft) rug therefore lands somewhere around 1.5–2.5 kg total. Treat these as planning numbers, not gospel — your gun, yarn, and hand all shift them.
Always buy extra — and buy it now
Two rules save projects:
Add a 15–20% buffer to every color. Test patches, mistakes, re-tufts, and trimming all consume yarn the estimate doesn't.
Buy all of a color in one dye lot, up front. Yarn dyed in different batches can differ subtly in shade, and the seam where two lots meet is often visible in a finished rug. If in doubt, buy more of the main colors than you think you need.
Plan by color, not just total
A big background color and a small accent have completely different needs, and buying "2 kg of yarn" without splitting it by shade is how people end up short on the one color that covers most of the rug. Estimating per color — which the calculator does from your design image — turns a guess into a shopping list.