Flooring work: installation price per m² 2026

You don't choose a floor only by how it looks. What matters more is what will happen in the room. Will people walk in with outdoor shoes? Could water get spilt? Do children or a dog run around the house? Is there underfloor heating underneath? A material that lasts for years in a bedroom can look tired after a few seasons in a hallway or kitchen.

• Laminate: copes well with scratches and is one of the more affordable options. Its resistance to wear is shown by AC classes. AC4 is the usual choice for a home, and a higher class makes sense for busy areas. The core is fibreboard, though, and it swells when water gets into the joints. That is why laminate doesn't belong in a bathroom.
• Vinyl: water doesn't bother it, it is quieter and feels warmer underfoot. How long it lasts depends on the thickness of the wear layer, the clear top layer that takes the traffic. Vinyl with a rigid mineral core keeps its size better. Flexible vinyl follows the subfloor more closely, but it also shows every bump in it.
• Wooden floor: a natural material you can refinish several times. It reacts to air humidity, though, and sharp objects leave marks on it.
• Tiles: very hard-wearing in kitchens, hallways and bathrooms, and they work very well with underfloor heating. They feel cold and hard underfoot.

Do you have large south-facing windows or a conservatory? Floating vinyl heats up and expands in direct sunlight. In rooms like that, fitters often lay vinyl glued over the whole area, so it can't move.

A good floor is only as good as the subfloor under it. Lay a floating floor on an uneven surface and it will flex and creak underfoot, and the click joints will get damaged over time. Thin glue-down vinyl shows every ripple and every grain of sand. So the fitter checks flatness with a long straightedge. High spots get ground down, and dips get filled with a self-levelling compound.

New screed is full of water, and it takes weeks, sometimes months, to dry out. If wood or a glued covering goes down too early, that moisture moves into the floor. Wood swells, vinyl comes unstuck, and mould can grow under a floating floor. The fitter measures residual moisture directly in the screed using the calcium carbide method, often called the CM test. As a rough guide, wooden floors on cement screed need around 2 % and on anhydrite (calcium sulphate) screed around 0.5 %. With underfloor heating the values should be even lower. The exact limits always come from the manufacturer of the covering and the adhesive.

Laying a new floor over old tiles or an existing floor? First make sure the base is solid and doesn't move anywhere. Deep grout lines in old tiles need filling. Otherwise, after a while, their pattern shows through thin vinyl and you will see it on the floor.

A floating floor needs an underlay. It evens out small irregularities, reduces noise and protects the click joints. On concrete or anhydrite screed, laminate and wood also need a vapour barrier membrane. The fitter overlaps and tapes its joints so it stops moisture rising from below. Some underlays already have a vapour barrier built in. If your vinyl comes with an integrated underlay, don't add another one, because the joints would be overloaded.

In a flat, you also need to think about impact sound, meaning the noise of your footsteps travelling into the flat below. Laminate on a thin underlay sounds hollow and loud, while vinyl and glued floors are quieter. If you're replacing carpet with a hard floor, a good acoustic underlay is worth it. Otherwise, expect complaints from the neighbours downstairs. A thicker underlay isn't automatically better, though. For click vinyl and for underfloor heating, manufacturers specify exact values, and you should stick to them.

Before you start, check your lease or the house rules. In many blocks of flats the lease or the owners' association sets conditions for hard floors, for example a minimum sound insulation or a requirement to ask the building management first. Rules on noisy work hours are also common. If the job goes beyond the floor covering, for example breaking out screed, moving pipes or touching the structure, ask your local building authority beforehand what permission you need.

A floating floor isn't fixed to the subfloor. It expands and shrinks with temperature and humidity, so it needs a gap all the way round the room. The skirting board then hides that gap. In long rooms and where the floor narrows, for example in doorways, the fitter adds an expansion joint covered with a transition strip. The manufacturer tells you how long a floor can run without one.

Seamless floors running through the whole home without any strips look clean, and more and more people want them. With a floating floor, though, they only work if the manufacturer allows it for that size of area. Otherwise the floor starts to ripple as it moves, or the joints crack. A floor glued over its whole area doesn't have this limit.

Don't stand kitchen units, fitted wardrobes or a heavy kitchen island on a floating floor. They pin it to the subfloor, and the floor can no longer move freely. You have two options: lay the floor only up to the units and leave the subfloor bare underneath them, or fit the units first and lay the floor up to them with an expansion gap. In practice, a floor often lifts after the first winter right next to heavy furniture.

Every floor covering holds back some heat. The more it holds back, the less heat reaches the room, and the hotter the water your boiler or heat pump has to produce. This matters even more with a heat pump, which runs most efficiently at low water temperatures. Manufacturers therefore state whether a covering is suitable for underfloor heating. The total thermal resistance of the covering plus the underlay should be low.

Why do fitters recommend glued floors over underfloor heating? Because there is no air layer between the covering and the screed to slow the heat down. For wood, choose a more stable engineered floor and species that don't twist much as they dry. Beech and maple react more strongly to changes in humidity, so they are less suitable. The surface temperature under a wooden floor shouldn't go above the value the manufacturer gives.

A solid wood floor is one piece of timber through its full thickness, and you can sand it many times. An engineered floor has a thinner top layer of hardwood on a base layer. It keeps its size better, moves less and also works over underfloor heating. How many times you can refinish it depends on the thickness of that top layer.

Lacquer or oil protects the wood. Lacquer forms a tough film, and the floor is easy to clean. If it gets damaged, though, the repair means sanding and relacquering the whole area, otherwise the patch stays visible. Oil soaks into the wood, gives a matt finish and looks more natural. It does need regular care. Its big advantage: you can sand and re-oil just the damaged spot, and the difference won't show.

Wood moves with the humidity in the air. In winter the heating dries the air and gaps open between the boards, and in summer they close again. When humidity drops well below roughly 40 %, wood can crack. When it is very humid, boards cup. A humidifier in winter does both the floor and you some good.

Old parquet, whether from the 1960s to the 1980s or from earlier decades, is often made of good-quality timber, and after restoration it can look almost new. Before sanding, the fitter checks for loose blocks and glues them back. They also check how much wood is left above the tongue, because that decides how many more times the parquet can be sanded. Gaps get filled with a filler mixed with sanding dust, so it matches the colour of the wood.

Sanding goes step by step from coarse to fine grit. Along the walls and in corners, a smaller edging sander finishes the job. Then the dust gets vacuumed up, a base coat of lacquer or oil goes on, and finally the top coats. Before lacquering, find out what the parquet was treated with before. Old wax and some oils stop new lacquer from sticking and have to come off first.

One safety point for older buildings: parquet was often laid in a black bitumen adhesive, and in some older homes this adhesive can contain asbestos. If you plan to lift blocks or sand down into the adhesive, have a sample tested first. If it contains asbestos, removal is a job for a licensed specialist.

Restoring isn't worth it if the parquet has been sanded down to the tongue, has woodworm, has been wet for a long time or has come loose over a large area. In that case, replacing it with a new floor makes more sense.

You can often fix small damage to a wooden floor yourself, without calling a floor fitter. The method depends on whether your floor is oiled or lacquered.

1. Find out the finish: on lacquer, a drop of water sits on the surface like a bead, while oiled wood soaks it in slightly after a moment.
2. For a dent in oiled wood, for example from something you dropped, lay a damp cotton cloth over the spot and briefly run a hot iron over it. The steam lifts the crushed wood fibres.
3. Once it's dry, lightly sand the spot along the grain and treat it with the same oil as the rest of the floor.
4. Sand a shallow scratch on an oiled floor with fine sandpaper along the grain and re-oil it. After a few minutes, wipe off the excess oil until the surface is dry.
5. Cover a shallow scratch on a lacquered floor with a touch-up pen or wax in the colour of the wood. For deeper damage to the lacquer, sand and relacquer a larger area.
6. Stick felt pads under the legs of chairs and furniture, and put a protective mat under your office chair, so the damage doesn't come back.

• The floor is flat, doesn't flex and doesn't creak or click at the joints when you walk on it
• The board joints are tight, with no raised edges and no gaps
• Skirting boards cover the expansion gap all round, and they are not fixed to the floor
• Transition strips sit firmly and doors open without rubbing
• A glued floor doesn't sound hollow when you tap it
• You have received a record of the subfloor moisture test and care instructions for the finish
• A few boards from the same production batch are set aside for any future repair