Short definition
Carpet manufactured on a wide loom and sold from a roll — distinct from carpet tiles (modular squares).
Broadloom carpet is carpet manufactured on a wide loom and sold from a roll. The standard roll width in Australia is 3.66m (12 feet, a legacy of imperial loom widths) or 4m. The other common format — carpet tiles — comes in modular squares (typically 50 × 50 cm) and is a different installation discipline.
For a flooring takeoff, broadloom raises two questions that hard flooring does not: where do the seams go, and how much wastage does the room geometry force? A 5m wide room from a 3.66m roll needs at least one seam and produces a strip of offcut. The same room from a 4m roll might fit without a seam but with substantial offcut.
Most flooring shops handle the seam-layout calculation outside the takeoff tool — once area and perimeter are measured, a separate roll-width calculation produces the actual roll metres ordered. AreaSum reports the raw area and lets you layer that calculation on top, rather than forcing a fixed roll-width into the takeoff.
Wastage on broadloom is typically higher than on hard flooring (5–15% vs 7–10%) because of roll-width geometry and pattern matching on patterned carpets. Pile-direction matters too — runs in adjoining rooms generally need to point the same way for a uniform look, which can force extra waste at junctions.