We present a closest separable state to cluster states, which in turn allows us to calculate the entanglement scaling using relative entropy of entanglement. We reproduce known results for pure cluster states and show how our method can be used in quantifying entanglement in noisy cluster states. Operational meaning is given to our method, which clearly demonstrates how these closest separable states can be constructed from two-qubit clusters in the case of pure states. We also discuss the issue of finding the critical temperature at which the cluster state becomes only classically correlated and the importance of this temperature to our method.