Flooring
Floor installation cost
Hardwood runs about $12 to $18 a square foot fitted, laminate and LVP a good deal less. But the shape of the bill is what the price-per-square-foot lists hide: on the cheap floors most of what you pay is labour, so a cheaper material saves far less than it looks. Price your own room below, with the boxes, the trim and the transitions in it.
Written and edited by Pablo Ruiz Quintero
Last reviewed 2026-09-16 · Nothing you type leaves your browser
What are you doing to the floor?
Room 1
Feet and inches both work: 12' 6", 12.5, 12-6
Read as 18' × 14'
Waterproof and usually with the pad attached. The default now for kitchens, baths and basements, where wood should not go.
Read it off the box you are buying — it varies more than any other figure here. Blank uses 24 ft².
One transition strip each.
The easiest to lift. Tack strips and staples are the slow part.
Every doorway ends a run and starts a new one, and the offcut rarely reaches. A house full of transitions loses far more than one big room of the same area.
Leave blank to use the allowance above.
Used only to pick a regional labour rate. It stays in your browser.
You need
12 boxes
252 ft² · +12% waste = 282.2 ft² · 24 ft² per box
A box is the unit, not the square foot
12 boxes cover 288 ft², which is 36 ft² more than the floor. That surplus is not waste — it is the repair material for the next ten years, in the right dye lot.
Shopping list
- Luxury vinyl plank (LVP)
24 ft² per box — 282.2 ft² needed with waste12 boxes - Underlayment
Not needed — the pad is attached to this product— - Quarter round or shoe moulding
Along 64 ft of wall, in 8 ft pieces8 pieces - Transition strips
One per doorway or change of floor2 strips - Spare left over
Keep it — a future box will be a different dye lot36 ft²
What it costs
Material, trim, removal and labour, separately. Only labour and removal move with where you live.
- Flooring$960
- Trim and transitions$132
- Removing the old floor$164
- Installed labour$882
- Typical total$2,137
Range $1,306 – $3,592 · $8.48 per ft² installed
Worth knowing
- Leave a 0.25 in expansion gap at every wall and every fixed object. A floating floor that is packed tight against a wall has nowhere to go when it grows, so it lifts in the middle — and there is no fixing it without pulling the floor up.
- Let the boxes sit in the room for 48 hours before cutting anything, opened and stacked flat. Flooring that is fitted straight off the truck moves after it is down.
- Rounding up to whole boxes leaves about 36 ft² spare. Keep it: the same product in two years will be a different dye lot, and a spare plank is the only way to repair a damaged board invisibly.
On this page — 11 sections
- 01What a floor actually costs installed
- 02Reading the result
- 03Why the answer is boxes, not square feet
- 04Waste is about cuts, not about size
- 05Refinishing versus replacing
- 06The subfloor decides whether any of this works
- 07The expansion gap, and why floors buckle
- 08Laminate against vinyl plank, and which floor goes where
- 09Five ways this goes wrong
- 10How the calculator works it out
- 11The words on the box and on the quote
What a floor actually costs installed
The most searched question about flooring is not how much to buy — it is what it costs fitted. And the answer has a shape that price-per-square-foot lists hide: on the cheap floors, most of what you pay is labour.
That is the practical consequence: with laminate, finding boards a dollar cheaper per square foot moves the installed total by well under a fifth. The lever that actually changes the number is whether you fit it yourself, and how much old floor has to come up first.
Removal is the line most often missing from an estimate, and it varies by a factor of four depending on what is down there.
| Coming up | Per ft² | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Carpet and pad | $0.65 | The easiest to lift. Tack strips and staples are the slow part. |
| Laminate or floating vinyl | $0.85 | Floating floors come up fast; glued-down vinyl does not. |
| Nailed hardwood | $1.90 | Every board is nailed. Slow, loud, and hard on the subfloor. |
| Ceramic or stone tile | $2.60 | The most expensive removal there is — the mortar bed fights back and the debris is heavy. |
Reading the result
The short version
- The answer is in boxes, because a box cannot be split. The surplus from rounding up is your repair material, not waste.
- Waste follows how the floor is laid, not how big the room is. A hallway full of doorways wastes more than an open room twice its size.
- Labour is most of the cost on a cheap floor. Halving the price of laminate barely moves the installed total.
- If the wood you have is sound, refinishing usually beats replacing — and this page prices both.
The headline is the number of boxes to buy. Underneath it is the working — the measured area, anything subtracted, the waste allowance and the coverage per box — so the one figure most likely to be wrong is visible rather than buried.
That figure is the coverage. It is the input this calculator cares most about and the one every rule of thumb gets wrong, because it is a property of the specific product rather than of the category. Read it off the box you intend to buy and type it in.
boxes = ceil( area ft² × (1 + waste) ÷ ft² per box )
- area
- measured wall to wall, minus anything the floor does not go under
- waste
- set by the layout: 7% open, 12% several rooms, 18% diagonal
- ft² per box
- off the carton — between about 18 and 30
- ceil
- always up. A box does not split
Worked through — A 252 ft² room with 12% waste needs 282 ft². At 24 ft² per box that is 11.8 boxes, so 12 boxes — 288 ft², leaving 36 ft² spare in the right dye lot.
Why the answer is boxes, not square feet
Flooring is priced per square foot and sold per box. Every quote you see is in the first unit and every purchase you make is in the second, and the gap between them is where orders go wrong.
Carton coverage is not standardised. Two laminates sitting next to each other on the same aisle can differ by a third — one at 18 ft², one at 24 — which means the same floor needs a meaningfully different number of boxes depending on which product you pick. No calculator can know that from the category alone, which is why this one asks.
| Floor | Typical box | Expansion gap | Acclimation | Life |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Laminate | 20.1 ft² | 0.25 in | 48 h | 15–25 yr |
| Luxury vinyl plank (LVP) | 24 ft² | 0.25 in | 48 h | 20–25 yr |
| Engineered wood | 23 ft² | 0.5 in | 72 h | 25–40 yr |
| Solid hardwood | 20 ft² | 0.75 in | 120 h | 50–100 yr |
MaterialsEstimator, Flooring carton coverage survey · checked 2026-09-16
Waste is about cuts, not about size
The waste allowance on a floor has almost nothing to do with the area and everything to do with how many cuts the layout forces, and whether the offcut from each cut can start the next row.
In one open room it can. You cut the last plank of a row, and the piece you cut off starts the next one — so the only real loss is the final offcut of each run and the rip along the first wall. In a house with a hallway and four doorways, every opening ends a run and the leftover is usually too short to begin the next. Same square footage, very different order.
| Layout | Waste | Why |
|---|---|---|
| One open room, straight lay | 7% | The offcut at the end of each row starts the next one, so the only real loss is the last piece of each run and the first row's rip. |
| Several rooms and a hallway | 12% | Every doorway ends a run and starts a new one, and the offcut rarely reaches. A house full of transitions loses far more than one big room of the same area. |
| Diagonal or herringbone | 18% | Both ends of almost every plank are cut on the bias, and a bias offcut fits nowhere. Eighteen per cent is the floor, not the ceiling. |
| Angled walls, islands, many obstructions | 15% | Each obstruction forces a scribed cut that consumes a whole plank to produce a small piece. |
Manufacturers print five per cent and installers order ten. Both are right for different jobs, and the gap between them is precisely the thing a single fixed allowance cannot capture — which is why the figure here is set by the layout, shown as a percentage, and editable.
Refinishing versus replacing
If what you have is real wood and the boards are sound, this is the decision that saves the most money on this page — and almost nowhere prices the two options side by side. Switch the calculator to refinish and it does.
Sanding and refinishing is a labour-only job at roughly $3–7 per square foot, plus about a dollar more for a colour change. Replacing means removal, disposal, new material and installation — typically three to five times as much for a floor that will not be better, only newer.
| Refinish what you have | Replace it | |
|---|---|---|
| Typical cost | $4.5/ft², labour only | $12–18/ft² installed for solid wood |
| Time | 3 coats, 3 days before furniture | Removal, subfloor prep, acclimation, fitting |
| Disruption | The room is unusable, and the dust travels | The room is a building site |
| Limits | Solid wood takes 4–6 sandings; engineered 1–2 | None, but you are starting again |
| Choose it when | Boards are sound, thick enough, and you like the wood | Cupped, water-damaged, sanded thin, or you want a different floor |
The subfloor decides whether any of this works
Three properties of what is underneath will ruin a new floor regardless of how carefully it was ordered.
Flatness. A floating floor bridges hollows. Anywhere the deck dips more than the tolerance over a ten-foot span, the boards flex when you walk on them, the joints work, and eventually they click or separate. Check it with a long straightedge before the flooring arrives — levelling compound is cheap and lifting a finished floor is not.
Moisture. Concrete slabs release water vapour for years, and a slab that feels dry can still be wet enough to destroy wood from below. Over concrete, the underlayment has to include a vapour barrier, and solid hardwood should not go there at all.
Soundness. Squeaks, loose panels and soft spots are all easier to fix now than ever again. The window between the old floor coming up and the new one going down is the only chance you get.
Between the old floor and the new one
- Straightedge across the whole floor, marking every hollow and high spot.
- Screws into any panel that moves or squeaks, before anything covers it.
- Levelling compound in the dips, and let it cure fully.
- A moisture test on concrete — a taped-down plastic sheet overnight tells you a lot for free.
- Doors checked for clearance: a new floor is usually thicker than the old one.
- Boxes opened and stacked in the room to acclimate while you do all of the above.
The expansion gap, and why floors buckle
More floating floors are ruined by this one detail than by any other, and it costs nothing to get right.
Wood and wood-based products take on moisture from the air and grow. A floating floor is designed to move as one sheet, which means it needs somewhere to go at the edges. Fitted hard against a wall, it has nowhere — so when the humidity rises, the middle of the floor lifts off the subfloor and stays lifted.
0.25"
Laminate
48 h to acclimate
0.25"
Luxury vinyl plank (LVP)
48 h to acclimate
0.5"
Engineered wood
72 h to acclimate
0.75"
Solid hardwood
120 h to acclimate
The gap goes at every wall and every fixed object: door frames, pipes, hearths, cabinets that sit on the subfloor. It is covered afterwards by the quarter round or the skirting, which is why the trim is fastened to the wall and never to the floor — pinning the trim down through the boards defeats the whole arrangement.
The other half of the same problem is acclimation. Flooring delivered from a cold truck into a heated house is at the wrong moisture content, and it will reach the right one after you have fitted it. Two to five days in the room, boxes opened and stacked so air gets to the boards, is the whole fix.
Laminate against vinyl plank, and which floor goes where
These two are most of the market and most of the confusion, because they look alike in a showroom and behave completely differently the first time something spills.
| Laminate | Luxury vinyl plank | |
|---|---|---|
| Installed, per ft² | $5.40 | $6.90 |
| What the top layer is | A printed photograph under melamine | A printed film under a clear wear layer |
| What the core is | Compressed wood fibre | Vinyl, or vinyl over a rigid core |
| Water | The core swells and never goes back | Genuinely waterproof, core and all |
| Underlayment | Needed, separately | Usually attached to the plank |
| Underfoot | Harder, and louder — it clicks | Softer and quieter, slightly springy |
| Dents | Resists them well | Takes a mark from a chair leg |
| Lifespan | 15–25 years | 20–25 years |
The dollar gap is $1.50 a square foot — about $450 on a 300 ft² room, which is less than most people expect and less than either salesman implies.
Water settles it. A laminate core is compressed wood, and wood that gets wet swells and stays swollen — one dishwasher leak and the planks at the edge lift and never sit down again. Vinyl plank does not care. That is why kitchens, bathrooms, laundries and basements are vinyl now and why laminate has retreated to bedrooms and hallways where nothing spills.
Where laminate still wins is hardness. The melamine surface resists scratching and denting better than a vinyl wear layer, so a busy hallway with dogs and no plumbing is genuinely a laminate room. And it is the cheaper of the two once the attached pad on the vinyl is accounted for.
| Room | Put down | Because |
|---|---|---|
| Kitchen, bathroom, laundry | Vinyl plank or tile | Anything with a wood core fails here eventually, and it fails permanently. |
| Basement, over a slab | Vinyl plank | Concrete gives off moisture for the life of the building. Solid wood is not an option at all. |
| Bedrooms, hallways | Laminate, or anything | Nothing spills and nothing is heavy. This is where the cheapest sensible floor belongs. |
| Living room on a wood subfloor | Engineered or solid wood | The one place the extra money buys something that lasts decades and can be refinished. |
| Rental, whole unit | Vinyl plank | It survives tenants, it survives leaks, and a damaged plank comes up without lifting the floor. |
Five ways this goes wrong
01Ordering square feet instead of boxes
A box cannot be split, and coverage varies from 18 to 30 ft² between products. Ordering '280 square feet' leaves the supplier to round, and they round down as often as up.
Instead — Work out the boxes from the coverage printed on the product you are buying, and round up yourself.
02Using one waste percentage for every job
Five per cent is right for an open room and badly short for a hallway with four doorways or a diagonal layout, where nearly every offcut is scrap.
Instead — Set the allowance from the layout. The difference between 7% and 18% on a 1,000 ft² house is more than four boxes.
03Fitting it tight to the walls
A floating floor grows with humidity. With no expansion gap it has nowhere to go but up, and a buckled floor cannot be fixed without lifting it.
Instead — Leave the gap the product specifies at every wall and every fixed object, and fasten the trim to the wall rather than through the floor.
04Fitting it the day it arrives
Flooring off a truck is at the truck's humidity, not the room's. It reaches equilibrium afterwards, and that movement shows up as gaps between boards or lifted joints.
Instead — Two to five days in the room, boxes opened and stacked flat. Use the time to sort the subfloor out.
05Throwing away the leftovers
Dye lots change. The box you buy in two years to fix a damaged board will be visibly different from the floor around it.
Instead — Keep at least one full box, flat and dry. It is the only invisible repair you will ever be able to make.
How the calculator works it out
- 01Measure each roomLength by width, wall to wall — flooring runs under the trim. Add closets; subtract kitchen islands and anything else the floor does not go under.
- 02Add waste for how it will be laidSeven per cent for one open room, twelve for several rooms and a hallway, eighteen for a diagonal or herringbone layout.
- 03Read the coverage off the boxNot the rule of thumb. Carton coverage varies from about 18 to 30 ft², and two products on the same aisle can differ by a third.
- 04Divide and round up to whole boxesA box cannot be split, so the real answer is always a whole number, and the surplus is your future repair material.
- 05Count the trim and the transitionsQuarter round along the perimeter, one transition strip per doorway or change of floor.
- 06Price removal separatelyLifting carpet is cheap, lifting tile is not. It is charged per square foot and it is often the line missing from a quote.
Expansion gaps, acclimation times and subfloor flatness follow the wood flooring association’s installation guidelines. Coverage figures come from a survey of what is actually stocked, and they are the default rather than the answer — the box in front of you wins. Prices are split into material, labour, removal and refinishing so each can be checked separately, and only the labour side is adjusted for where you live. All of it is on the sources page, dated.
Nothing you type is sent anywhere — the whole calculation runs in your browser.
Measuring an awkward room first? The square footage calculator handles angles, circles and cut-outs, and gives you the perimeter for the trim.
Square footage calculatorThe words on the box and on the quote
Flooring hides a lot of its important information in vocabulary, and the two that cost people money are dye lot and wear layer.
- Carton or box
- The unit flooring is sold in, and it cannot be split. Coverage varies from about 18 to 30 ft² between products, so the box on the shelf beats any rule of thumb.
- Dye lot
- The production run a batch of flooring came from. Two boxes of the same product from different lots can differ visibly in shade, which is why the surplus from this job is the only reliable repair material you will ever have.
- Expansion gap
- The space left between the floor and every wall so the material can grow with humidity. A floating floor packed tight against a wall lifts in the middle, and the only fix is to take it up.
- Acclimation
- Leaving the flooring in the room where it will be fitted, opened and stacked, until it reaches the humidity of the house. Skipping it is why gaps open between boards in the first winter.
- Floating floor
- A floor that clicks together and rests on the subfloor without being nailed or glued. Laminate and most LVP are floating; solid hardwood never is.
- Underlayment
- The thin layer between subfloor and floor that absorbs sound, evens out small imperfections and — over concrete — blocks moisture. Many LVP products have it attached already.
- Wear layer
- The thickness of finished material above the tongue on an engineered floor, or the clear film on vinyl. It decides whether a floor can ever be sanded, and how many times.
- Transition strip
- The profile that bridges two floors at a doorway or a change of height. One per opening, and the item most often discovered missing on the final day.
- Subfloor flatness
- How level the deck under the floor is, usually specified as a maximum deviation over a ten-foot span. Floating floors telegraph every hollow underneath as a soft spot or a click.
Common questions
- How much does it cost to install hardwood floors?
- Solid hardwood runs roughly $4 to $16 per square foot for the material and $4 to $11 per square foot to fit, so a typical installed figure is $12 to $18 per square foot before removing the old floor. The labour half is what moves with where you live; the boards cost much the same everywhere.
- How much does it cost to refinish hardwood floors?
- About $3 to $7 per square foot to sand and seal, with roughly another $1 for a colour change. Most finishers also have a job minimum, because the setup, the machine hire and the drying days cost the same in a small room as a large one. On a sound floor it is almost always cheaper than replacing.
- Is it cheaper to refinish or replace a wood floor?
- Refinish, if the boards are sound and thick enough to sand. Refinishing is a labour-only job at a few dollars a square foot; replacing means removal, disposal, new material and installation. Replacement wins when the boards are cupped, water-damaged, already sanded thin, or when you want a different floor entirely.
- How many boxes of flooring do I need?
- Divide your area plus waste by the coverage printed on the box, then round up — a box cannot be split. The coverage is the number to check: it varies from about 18 to 30 ft² between products, so two floors at the same price per square foot can need very different box counts.
- How much extra flooring should I buy?
- Seven per cent for a single open room, twelve for several rooms and a hallway, and eighteen for a diagonal or herringbone layout. Manufacturers usually say five and installers usually order ten, and the difference between those numbers is exactly how many cuts your layout forces.
- Can I put hardwood flooring over concrete?
- Not solid hardwood — it has to be nailed to a wood subfloor, and slab moisture will cup and crown it. Engineered wood is the equivalent that can go over concrete, and it needs an underlayment with a vapour barrier underneath regardless.
- What is an expansion gap and how big should it be?
- The space left between the floor and every wall so the material can expand with humidity — typically a quarter inch for laminate and vinyl, half an inch for engineered, and three quarters for solid wood. A floating floor fitted tight against a wall buckles in the middle, and there is no repair short of lifting it.
- Do I need underlayment?
- Yes for laminate, engineered and solid wood; usually not for luxury vinyl plank, which normally comes with the pad attached. Over a concrete slab, whatever you use has to include a vapour barrier — moisture rising through a slab will destroy a floor from underneath.
- How long does flooring need to acclimate?
- Two days for laminate and vinyl, three for engineered, and up to five for solid hardwood — in the room where it will be fitted, boxes opened and stacked so air reaches the boards. Flooring installed straight off the truck moves after it is down, and that movement shows as gaps or buckling.
- How much does it cost to remove old flooring?
- Carpet is the cheapest at well under a dollar a square foot. Nailed hardwood is around two dollars because every board is fastened, and ceramic or stone tile is the most expensive of all — the mortar bed fights back and the debris is heavy enough to matter at the dump.
- Should I keep the leftover boxes?
- Yes, and this is the single most useful habit in flooring. The same product bought in two years will come from a different dye lot and will not match. One spare box, stored flat and dry, is the difference between an invisible repair and a visible patch.
- How flat does the subfloor need to be?
- Flat enough that a floating floor does not bridge a hollow — the usual specification is a small maximum deviation over a ten-foot span. It is worth checking with a long straightedge before the flooring arrives, because levelling compound is cheap and lifting a finished floor is not.
Send this to whoever is paying
The link carries your measurements, so whoever opens it sees the same numbers you are looking at — and you can come back to it yourself tomorrow with the delivery note in front of you.
Plain links, no tracking scripts. Nothing here reports back that you shared it.
About the author
Pablo Ruiz Quintero — Editor
Editor of MaterialsEstimator. Decides which documents count as a source, what every default value is, and where the line sits between what the reader parses and what the engines compute.
More about how this site is edited