Start With Square Metres, Not Showroom Prices

Before you fall in love with a herringbone oak, measure your home properly. A full flooring project is priced by area, and a rough rule of thumb is that usable floor area is around 75 to 80 per cent of your total square footage, once you strip out stairwells, built-in wardrobes and the awkward corner behind the boiler. A typical three-bedroom semi has somewhere between 75 and 95 square metres of flooring to cover, including stairs and landing.

Walk the house room by room and note the subfloor in each. Concrete, chipboard, floorboards and old tile all behave differently, and the prep work they need can add thousands to a quote. Photograph anything that looks uneven, squeaky or damp. If you can hand a fitter an accurate plan with measurements and photos, your quotes will be tighter and far easier to compare.

Materials: Comparing Like With Like

Material costs vary enormously, and the cheapest headline price is rarely the cheapest floor over time. As a broad guide for supply only, per square metre:

• Carpet: £12–£45, with wool blends at the top end lasting considerably longer in hallways and on stairs.
• Laminate: £15–£40, but only worth fitting in dry rooms.
• Luxury vinyl tile (LVT): £25–£60, waterproof, warm underfoot and hard-wearing.
• Engineered wood: £40–£100, able to be sanded back once or twice.
• Porcelain or ceramic tile: £30–£100, plus a much higher fitting cost.

Do not forget the layers beneath. Underlay runs from around £3 per square metre for basic foam to £15 for quality wool crumb or rubber acoustic underlay. Good underlay makes a mid-range carpet feel luxurious and can add years to its life, so it is one of the few places where spending more is genuinely worthwhile. For hard floors, budget for a decent underlay or acoustic membrane too, especially in flats or upstairs bedrooms.

The Costs That Catch People Out

The material and the fitting fee are only part of the invoice. These extras routinely add 15 to 25 per cent to a project:

• Subfloor preparation: levelling compound, ply overboarding or screeding at £10–£30 per square metre.
• Removing and disposing of the old floor: skip hire of £180–£350, or a fitter's removal charge.
• Trims, scotia, thresholds and door bars: easily £150–£400 across a whole house.
• Door trimming or rehanging: usually £25–£60 per door once a thicker floor is laid.
• Adhesive, gripper rods, staples and sealant: small items that add up quickly across ten rooms.
• Moving furniture: either your weekend, or the fitter's hourly rate.

A three-bedroom house with 85 square metres of mid-range LVT and carpet, proper prep and full disposal typically lands between £4,000 and £9,000. That range is wide because prep and access, not the pretty samples, drive the final figure.

Fitting: Why Paying a Professional Is Often the Bargain

DIY looks tempting when you are quoted £20–£40 per square metre for laying hard flooring, or £4–£8 for carpet. But stretched carpet that ripples within a year, a badly staggered plank pattern, or a vinyl floor laid over damp concrete will cost more to put right than the original fitting fee. Carpet in particular needs a power stretcher and a knee kicker to be installed properly; neither is a sensible one-off purchase.

Consider a hybrid approach. Strip out and dispose of the old flooring yourself, move the furniture, and lift the skirting boards if you are confident. Then pay a fitter for the technical work. You keep the labour cost down without gambling on the part that is hardest to redo.

Think in Cost Per Year, Not Cost Today

A £20 per square metre laminate replaced after seven years costs about £3 per square metre annually, before fitting. A £50 engineered oak floor that lasts 25 years and can be sanded back costs around £2, plus a fraction of the fitting cost because you only pay it once. Add the resale effect: buyers notice floors immediately, and a well-fitted, consistent floor across a ground level often reads as a house that has been properly maintained.

Cheap flooring also has hidden running costs. Thin vinyl that curls at the edges, carpets that mat in walkways, and tiles that crack because the subfloor was never levelled all mean money spent twice.

Phase the Work and Protect Your Contingency

Nobody has to do the whole house in one weekend. A sensible order is to tackle the rooms that take the most punishment first: hallway, stairs, kitchen and bathroom. Living rooms and bedrooms can follow next year, and if you keep the same finish flowing through adjoining spaces, nobody will notice the gap.

Whatever total you arrive at, hold back 10 to 15 per cent as a contingency. In an older property, it is almost certain that at least one floor will hide something unexpected, whether that is a rotten joist, asbestos-backed vinyl or a patch of damp. Building that buffer in from the start turns a crisis into a line item, and lets you choose the floor you actually want rather than the one you can barely afford.