How to work out an area

Area is the amount of space taken up by a 2D shape.

When you want to measure the space on a wall, floor or a piece of paper, you are measuring area.

Area can be measured in square centimetres (cm²) and square metres (m²).

If you know the width and height of a rectangle, you can split it into squares and count them, to figure out its area.

You can also work out the area by multiplying the width and height together.

Complete this interactive activity to understand how to work out an area. Then put your knowledge to the test.

To work out the area of a rectangle, you must know the width and height.

This rectangle has a width of 8cm and a height of 2cm.

You can then split the rectangle into squares and count them to discover its area.

You can see that this rectangle contains 2 rows of 8 squares. That is 16 squares in total.

You can also find the area of a rectangle by multiplying the width and height together.

The area of this rectangle is:

8cm × 2cm = 16cm²

Example 2

Example 3