How Much Timber Do I Need for a Stud Wall? (UK Guide)

Strip it back and a stud wall has four parts.

The sole plate is the horizontal timber fixed to the floor. The head plate is the matching timber fixed to the ceiling joists above. Between them run the studs, the vertical uprights that give the wall its shape and carry the plasterboard. And tying the studs together partway up are the noggins, short horizontal pieces that stop the studs twisting and give you something solid to fix boards and fittings to.

Every one of those parts is usually cut from the same timber, which keeps ordering simple. Work out the total run of timber, add a bit for waste, and buy that many standard lengths.

Takeaway: four parts, one timber. If you can count studs and measure the length twice, you can order a stud wall.

Stud spacing is measured centre to centre, and in the UK the standard is 400mm. It isn't arbitrary. A standard plasterboard sheet is 1200mm wide, so at 400mm centres a board edge lands neatly on a stud with two more studs supporting the middle. Everything fixes onto solid timber.

You'll sometimes see 600mm centres on non-loadbearing walls, usually with a thicker board. It saves a bit of timber, but it also gives a springier wall and less fixing to work with, so most joiners stick with 400mm out of habit as much as anything. For a normal room partition, 400mm is the safe call.

Takeaway: frame at 400mm centres unless you've a specific reason not to. It matches the board size and keeps the wall stiff.

Here's the formula, and it's the one bit worth memorising:

Studs = (wall length in mm ÷ spacing), rounded up, plus one.

The "plus one" is the end stud, the last upright at the far end of the wall. Take a 3.6m wall at 400mm centres. That's 3600 ÷ 400 = 9, then add the end stud, so 10 studs.

Two things to add on top. Put an extra stud each side of a door opening to frame it, and add a short cripple stud above the door head. And if the wall meets another wall or a corner, you may want a stud there regardless of spacing so you've something to fix into.

Takeaway: length divided by spacing, round up, add one. Then add studs around any door.

The plates are the easy bit. You need the head and the sole plate, each running the full length of the wall, so that's simply twice the wall length. A 3.6m wall needs 7.2m of plate timber.

Noggins take a moment's thought. For a wall up to about 2.4m tall, one row of noggins roughly halfway up is enough. Go taller than that and you want two rows. On site the row usually goes in at around 1.2m from the floor, partly to brace the studs and partly so a horizontal plasterboard joint has solid timber behind it. Add extra noggins anywhere heavy is going on the wall: a radiator, a wall-hung basin, a TV bracket, kitchen units. It's far easier to put the blocking in now than to open the wall up later.

Takeaway: plates are twice the wall length. One row of noggins to 2.4m, two rows above, and extra blocking wherever weight will hang.

Most UK stud walls are framed in CLS timber. CLS stands for Canadian Lumber Standard, and it's the smooth, eased-edge timber you'll find stacked at every merchant. The two common sizes are 63 × 38mm for lighter partitions and 89 × 38mm for a standard room wall. If you're running pipes or cables in the wall, or you want more insulation in it, a deeper 140 × 38mm stud gives you the room.

Structural timber in the UK is strength graded to BS EN 338, and CLS is normally C16. That grade is fine for ordinary studwork. Where a wall needs more strength, for example if it's doing structural work, you step up to C24, and traditional sawn sizes like 75 × 50mm (3×2) and 100 × 50mm (4×2) come into play.

Takeaway: 89 × 38mm C16 CLS covers most partitions. Go deeper only if you need services or insulation inside the wall.

Boarding is a straight area sum. Take the wall area, length times height, then double it if you're boarding both sides. A standard UK plasterboard sheet is 2.4m × 1.2m, which is 2.88 square metres. Divide your total board area by 2.88, add around 10% for cuts and offcuts, and round up to whole sheets.

For that same 3.6m × 2.4m wall boarded both sides: 3.6 × 2.4 = 8.64 m² a side, so 17.28 m² for both. Add 10% and divide by 2.88 and you land on 7 sheets. Plasterboard is made to BS EN 520, and for most partitions standard 12.5mm board from British Gypsum or Knauf is what you want. Bathrooms take moisture-resistant board, and anywhere needing fire performance takes fireline board.

Takeaway: wall area, times sides, divide by 2.88, add 10%. Standard 12.5mm board unless the room says otherwise.

Put it all together on a real job. You're dividing a big bedroom in a 1930s Leeds semi into two, with a partition 3.6m long and 2.4m high. You'll frame it in 89 × 38mm CLS at 400mm centres and board both sides.

On price, in 2026 a 2.4m length of 89 × 38mm CLS is around £5 at Travis Perkins or Jewson, and a standard 12.5mm plasterboard sheet is roughly £10 to £13. Add screws, a bit of acoustic insulation and some jointing compound, and the core materials for this wall come in at about £180 to £220. Bring in a joiner to supply and fit it and you're looking at somewhere around £400 to £700 for a wall this size, depending on your region and how tidy you want the finish.

Takeaway: a standard partition is a couple of hundred pounds in materials, or the best part of a day's labour on top if you're getting it fitted.

Here's the contrarian bit. A lot of first-time builders massively over-order, usually on noggins. They picture three or four rows of blocking marching up the wall. For a standard 2.4m partition you need one row. The studs do the work; the noggin row is there to brace and to back a board joint, not to hold the wall up.

The other common over-spec is jumping to 100 × 50mm timber "to be safe" on a wall that's only dividing a room. Heavier timber costs more, weighs more to lift, and eats into the room. For a non-loadbearing partition, 89 × 38mm CLS is plenty. Save the beefy stuff for walls that are actually carrying something, and get those checked by an engineer rather than guessed.

Takeaway: more timber is not a safer wall, it's just a more expensive one. Spec for the job in front of you.

One line worth being clear on. If the wall is carrying anything above it, floor joists, a roof, a wall on the storey above, it's loadbearing, and it comes under Approved Document A. That's no longer an estimating job. Get a structural engineer to size the timber and any lintel before you cut a single length. The calculator here is for ordinary non-loadbearing partitions.

Rather than run the sums by hand, put your measurements into the Stud Wall Calculator UK. Enter the length, height, spacing and timber, and it gives you the studs, plates, noggins, total timber and plasterboard sheets, ready to take to the merchant. It's free, metric, and built around UK sizes.