diff --git a/meta/classes/image.bbclass b/meta/classes/image.bbclass
index 9f076a68e7..1b34ac423b 100644
--- a/meta/classes/image.bbclass
+++ b/meta/classes/image.bbclass
@@ -128,7 +128,7 @@ fakeroot do_rootfs () {
 
 	${IMAGE_PREPROCESS_COMMAND}
 
-	ROOTFS_SIZE=`du -ks ${IMAGE_ROOTFS}|awk '{size = ${IMAGE_EXTRA_SPACE} + $1; print (size > ${IMAGE_ROOTFS_SIZE} ? size : ${IMAGE_ROOTFS_SIZE}) }'`
+	ROOTFS_SIZE=`du -ks ${IMAGE_ROOTFS}|awk '{size = $1 * ${IMAGE_OVERHEAD_FACTOR}; print (size > ${IMAGE_ROOTFS_SIZE} ? size : ${IMAGE_ROOTFS_SIZE}) }'`
 	${@get_imagecmds(d)}
 
 	${IMAGE_POSTPROCESS_COMMAND}
diff --git a/meta/conf/bitbake.conf b/meta/conf/bitbake.conf
index d54aa35b82..f6eee7d2af 100644
--- a/meta/conf/bitbake.conf
+++ b/meta/conf/bitbake.conf
@@ -317,7 +317,11 @@ IMAGE_ROOTFS = "${WORKDIR}/rootfs"
 IMAGE_BASENAME = "${PN}"
 IMAGE_NAME = "${IMAGE_BASENAME}-${MACHINE}-${DATETIME}"
 IMAGE_LINK_NAME = "${IMAGE_BASENAME}-${MACHINE}"
-IMAGE_EXTRA_SPACE ?= 81920
+
+# This option allows for a precentage overage of the actaul image size rather than a
+# fixed extra space
+IMAGE_OVERHEAD_FACTOR ?= 1.2
+
 # Comment this option if you want default genext2fs behavior (i.e. create minimal inode number)
 IMAGE_EXTRA_OPTION ?= "-i 8192"