How Many Seed Beads Do I Need for My Kumihimo Necklace?

It’s late at night. You’re happily braiding along watching your favorite television program. You’re almost out of beads on several warps, but you’re not worried. Your braid is almost as long as you need. You keep braiding. You drop in the last bead and reach for your tape measure. So close! You just need to string a few more beads so you can finish up. You reach for the tube of seed beads and… NOOOOOOOO! It’s empty!

We’ve all been there. It’s so frustrating. The key to avoiding this agony is to take the time to accurately estimate how many beads you’ll need for your project before buying your beads.

Let’s assume that you’re making a beaded kongoh gumi using seed beads and you’ll be using the same size beads on every warp.

For this type of beaded rope the math is based on the following ratio:

Length of Strung Seed Beads per Warp : Finished Length of Braid = 1:2

In other words, you need half your beaded braid length in strung beads per warp.

For example, if you want to make a 20” necklace you would string 10” of beads on each of your eight warps. This assumes you’ll use magnetic endcaps that fit over your beads and add a negligible length. If using a toggle clasp or other ending that will add length, be sure to subtract that from the total finished length before calculating how many beads you’ll need.

Now that you know how many beads to string on each warp, calculate how many total beads are needed for the project.

Length of Strung Beads per Warp X Number of Warps = Total Length of Strung Beads per Project

For our example necklace, we’ll multiple 10” of strung beads per warp by 8 warps and get 80” of strung beads needed for the project.

Up until this point it didn’t matter what size beads we were using, but now we need to make a choice. Let’s use size 8˚ seed beads.

It takes 12 to 13 size 8˚ seed beads to string one inch.

Total Length of Strung Beads per Project X Beads per linear inch = number of beads needed for the project

For our example necklace we’ll take 80” of strung beads for our project and multiply by 12.5 beads per linear inch to get 1000 beads needed for the necklace.

Seed beads are generally sold by the gram, so you'll need to know that 8˚ Toho seed beads are 40 beads per gram.

Total Number of Beads Needed ÷ Beads per gram = grams needed

In our example necklace 1000 beads ÷ 40 beads per gram is 25 grams needed. I like a little slush, so I'm going to add an extra 10%.

25 grams x 1.1 = 27.5 grams needed including 10% slush

If your beads are sold in 8 gram tubes, you should buy four and you'll have plenty!