Why one price per square metre is not enough
A price per square metre hides what the quote includes. Preparation, underlay, removal of the old floor and waste disposal are priced separately by some fitters and bundled by others. When you compare two quotes with the same headline price, you may find they cover different work.
Every figure on this page comes from a named UK price guide with its update date. Most guides give UK-wide numbers. The guides are written by price-comparison and lead-generation businesses, not by a statistics body, so you should read them as a sanity check, not a promise.
Carpet and LVT fitting
Carpet
Checkatrade's carpet guide gives an installer hourly rate of £20 to £35 and a day rate of £150 to £250. The guide gives underlay and fitting at £8 to £12 per square metre and professional fitting alone at roughly £7 to £10. A single straight staircase is £150 to £250 plus VAT, floor levelling is £10 to £15 per square metre, and adjusting a door frame is £20 to £30 per door.
The page is titled 2026, shows an update stamp of 06/25, and dates its price table March 2025. You should treat the carpet figures as older than the others on this page.
LVT: two guides compared
| Item | MyJobQuote (6 Oct 2026) | Checkatrade (Mar 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Labour per m² | £15 to £30; £20 to £30 for a standard rectangular room | £10 to £60 (fitting range) |
| Herringbone labour per m² | £35 to £50 | £50 to £70 |
| Day rate | £150 to £250 | £200 to £350 |
| Underlay per m² | £3 to £8 | £3 to £8 |
| Waste removal | £100 to £150 if charged separately | £100 to £150 |
| Skip hire | About £220 | £200 to £350 |
| Surface preparation per m² | Not itemised | £2 to £13 |
Supplied and fitted
MyJobQuote prices LVT supplied and fitted at £35 to £50 per square metre for low-end product, £50 to £70 for mid-range and £70 to £90 for high-end. Checkatrade prices the product supply at £15 to £25, £25 to £40 and £40 to £60 across the same three tiers. The two guides do not state the same definitions, so the totals are not directly comparable.
By room
MyJobQuote gives labour for a small bathroom of 5m² at £75 to £150 (one day), a 12m² kitchen at £180 to £360 (one to two days), a 13m² double bedroom at £195 to £390, and a 17m² living room at £255 to £510 (two days).
Laminate and wood flooring
Laminate, with a Wales row
MyJobQuote's laminate guide (9 July 2026) gives labour of £10 to £40 per square metre, and £10 to £30 for most straightforward jobs. The guide gives day rates of £150 to £300 and supply and fit of £17 to £60 per square metre, with an average around £60 for mid-to-premium products.
| Region | Against national average | Supply and fit per m² |
|---|---|---|
| London and South East | 20% to 30% higher | £22 to £75 |
| South West | Roughly average | £17 to £60 |
| North of England | 10% to 15% lower | £15 to £52 |
| Wales | 10% to 15% lower | £15 to £50 |
The guide lists extras as separate lines: underlay about £4 per square metre, carpet removal around £7, laminate removal £3 to £8 plus £50 to £150 for disposal, tile or glued-floor removal around £10 to £15, a levelling compound £10 to £20, and door trims about £30 each. A seriously uneven floor is priced at £800 to £2,500.
Wood flooring
The wood guides disagree on installation and agree that the board is a large part of the price.
MyJobQuote (6 October 2026)
Supplied and fitted prices per square metre are oak £41 to £69, pine £51 to £72 and engineered wood £43 to £85. Materials alone are £35 to £45 for oak and £45 to £60 for engineered. The day rate is £150 to £250, fitters usually work in pairs so labour is £300 to £500 a day, and typical labour for an installation is £300 to £750. Removing the old floor is £40 to £180 in labour plus £50 to £150 for waste, and professional refinishing is typically £200 to £400.
Checkatrade (updated May 2026)
Engineered wood is £50 per square metre for supply and £45 for installation. Solid hardwood is £80 and over for supply and £35 to £60 for installation. The day rate is £250. Floor levelling is £6 per square metre for a 2mm correction on concrete and £30 per square metre for 50mm of screed on a floor in poor condition. The page shows 05/26 at the top and June 2026 in its tables.
The guide on engineered and solid wood flooring explains what separates the two products.
Tiling and sanding
Floor tiling: the biggest disagreement
| Item | MyJobQuote (20 Oct 2026) | Checkatrade (Jun 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Tiler labour per m² | £15 to £25 (a tiler laying 8m² to 12m² a day) | About £50 |
| Day rate | £150 to £300 | £200 to £350 |
| Installed total per m² | Not given | About £110 with tiles and materials |
| Removing old tiles | £8 to £15 per m² | £800 to £900 (job) |
| Grout and adhesive | Not priced | About £10 per m² |
MyJobQuote also gives tile supply at £15 to £25 per square metre for ceramic and £15 to £30 for porcelain, and it advises ordering about 10% more tiles than the exact area and closer to 15% for diagonal or herringbone layouts. Its extras include floor screeding at £18 to £25, self-levelling compound at £10 to £20, backer board supplied and fitted at £30 to £55 per square metre, and tanking for wet areas at £100 to £250.
The two tiling guides differ by a factor of two on labour. Neither gives a Wales row. Get tiling quotes itemised and compare the lines, not the total.
Floor sanding and refinishing
MyJobQuote (22 September 2026) prices sanding a straight plank floor at £12 to £16 per square metre and parquet at £15 to £22. Sanding and varnishing is £15 to £20, sanding and oiling is £18 to £23, staining adds £4 to £8, and polishing is £8 to £12. The average medium room is £240 and takes about a day. Gap filling has no per-square-metre rate: £40 to £250 for 10m², £80 to £500 for 20m² and £120 to £750 for 30m². The day rate is £100 to £200.
Checkatrade's restoration page gives £42 per square metre for sanding and refinishing, but its page was last updated in May 2024, so this page does not rely on it. The floor sanding guide covers the process and the dust.
Resin driveway cost
Checkatrade (header updated February 2026, tables dated April and June 2026) gives about £120 per square metre for a resin bound driveway, made up of £70 for materials and £50 for installation, and about £6,000 for a 50m² drive. Checkatrade gives installer labour at about £30 an hour. Groundwork such as levelling, repairs, sub-base or excavation adds to the total, and a missing stable edge must be created at extra cost. The page gives no figure for either. UV-stable resin is described as almost twice as expensive as non-UV-stable resin.
The page does not cover planning permission. For the Welsh rules, read the resin bound and resin bonded driveway guide and the guide to dropped kerbs in Wales.
Extras that change the total
Preparation
Preparation is where quotes diverge. Checkatrade says preparation depends on the existing floor, screeding, and the size and complexity of the space. The guide to preparing a subfloor lists the levelling and screeding lines.
Removal and disposal
Ask whether removal of the old floor, a skip and disposal are in the quote. Removal, a skip and disposal appear as separate lines in the MyJobQuote and Checkatrade guides.
Skirting and finishing
MyJobQuote lists skirting boards at £150 to £200 for an average medium room in its LVT guide and at around £22 per metre in its laminate guide. Painting and decorating a room of 15m² to 25m² is £400 to £700 in the LVT guide. None is part of a floor-fitting price unless the quote says so.
How to compare Welsh quotes
Four rules
- Get three written quotes, as Citizens Advice advises, for the same room and the same floor.
- Ask each fitter to list preparation, underlay, removal, disposal, skirting and VAT as separate lines.
- Treat a price far below the rest with caution, because Citizens Advice says the work may not be comparable.
- Keep any deposit low and do not agree to more than 25%.
A worked comparison
Suppose you want LVT in a 12m² kitchen. MyJobQuote gives labour of £180 to £360 for that room, taking one to two days. Applying Checkatrade's day rate of £200 to £350 to the same one to two days gives £200 to £700 by simple arithmetic. If one of your three quotes for labour sits far outside £180 to £700, ask the fitter to explain which lines differ before you decide.
Where to find fitters
The directory lists 86 carpet fitters, 74 vinyl, LVT and laminate fitters, 63 wood and parquet floor fitters, 91 floor tilers, 39 floor sanding businesses and 45 resin bound driveway installers in Wales. The seven-step fitter check covers the other checks.
What you can do with the numbers
Use the ranges to see whether a quote sits inside the field. You can also ask a fitter to explain a line that is far outside it, because the answer often shows what the other quotes left out.
What this page does not cover
The page does not price commercial, resin floor, polished concrete or gym flooring, because no readable primary price guide was checked for them. The page does not rely on any Welsh price site, because the local lead-generation sites checked disagree with each other. Only one source, the MyJobQuote laminate guide, gave a Wales row, and it is an estimate. Figures were read on 22 October 2026 and will date.