How Much Does Flooring Installation Cost?

Those are our rates, not an average pulled from other sites. If you’re in Toronto and want the whole rate card with a quote at the end, it’s on our flooring installation cost in Toronto page, and there’s a version for London, Ontario too. This article is the longer version: why the numbers are what they are, and how to read any flooring quote you get.

• What flooring installation costs per square foot
• What’s included in the price, and what isn’t
• A worked example: 800 square feet
• What makes a flooring job cost more
• Which floor is the best value to install?
• If you’ve already bought your flooring
• Get a price for your floor
• Frequently asked questions

Here’s what we charge per square foot to install, labour only:

Notice what drives the price. It isn’t really the material. It’s the method.

A floating floor clicks together over an underlay and nothing holds it to the subfloor, which is why laminate, click vinyl and click engineered all sit at the same $3.20. Glue it or nail it and the job changes: the subfloor has to be flatter, every board gets bonded, and the room takes longer. That’s the whole gap between $3.20 and $4.90 on what might be the same engineered board. There’s more on that split in click vs glue-down vinyl costs.

Tile is its own world. Thinset, spacing, levelling, cuts around every doorframe and toilet flange, then grout. At $13.50 it’s four times the rate of laminate, and on a bathroom floor you’ll see why by lunchtime. That $13.50 is labour; the thinset, grout and levelling clips are on top, like the tile itself. See tile installation for what the job involves.

We supply carpet but don’t install it, so there’s no carpet rate here.

This is where quotes stop being comparable, so here’s ours in full.

The installation rate covers the work of putting the new floor down:

• cutting and fitting, including around stairs, islands and doorways
• glue and nails on engineered, glue on glue-down vinyl
• clearing up and taking the waste with us

Taking up the old floor is priced on top, and what’s down now decides the number:

Carpet lifts fast. Anything glued down fights you: the adhesive or the mortar has to come off the subfloor too, which is why it sits at $3 to $5.

Subfloor levelling, if it’s needed, is priced in the same written quote. Nothing is added afterwards. The written quote is what you pay.

Now compare that with the cheapest number you’ll find online. You’ll see installers advertise labour “starting at $1.50” a square foot, with removal as a separate “starting at” line underneath and baseboards, stairs and door trimming extra again. A “starting at” price tells you the bottom of the range, not what your floor will cost.

The question to ask any installer: what does this number not include, and what does each of those cost? If they can’t answer in one breath, the number will move.

A typical Toronto main floor is about 800 square feet. Installation alone:

Add the floor you pick. If there’s carpet down now, taking it up adds $800 at $1.00 a square foot; if it’s old tile or glued vinyl, $2,400 to $4,000. Add a staircase at about $7,000 a flight if it’s part of the job.

Financing is available at 0% over 3, 6 or 12 months, so a $3,920 engineered floor works out to about $327 a month.

Two floors of the same size can quote differently. The usual reasons:

The subfloor. Uneven concrete in a basement, old plywood that flexes, a slab in a condo. Glue-down floors show every dip, so they need more prep than a floating floor ever will.

The pattern. Herringbone and chevron take far longer to lay than straight plank, because every board is cut and set at an angle. We price those per job.

Stairs. Priced per flight, not per square foot. A full remodel with treads, risers and railings is usually about $7,000. More on that in staircase renovation in Toronto.

Small rooms with lots of cuts. A powder room is mostly cuts: the toilet, the vanity, the door casing. Open space is quick to lay. Corners aren’t.

Glue-down over floating. Slower, more material, less forgiving.

For most rooms, click vinyl or laminate: $3.20 to install and quick to lay. Most click vinyl is waterproof, which makes it the usual pick for basements and kitchens. Browse the vinyl and laminate ranges to see what’s in stock.

If you want real wood, engineered hardwood is usually the better buy than solid in this climate. About nineteen of every twenty hardwood floors we lay are engineered, because it handles a Toronto winter’s humidity swings and goes down on a condo slab, glued or floated, where solid usually isn’t an option.

Don’t choose on the installation rate alone, though. The gap between $3.20 and $4.90 on 800 square feet is $1,360. The gap between a floor that suits the room and one that doesn’t is a redo.

We’ll install it at the same rates, as long as we’ve approved the material first. Send the brand and product name with your square footage, and we’ll tell you before the install date whether it’s a floor we’ll put down.

Send your square footage, the rooms, and a couple of photos of what’s down now. You’ll get a fixed written price.

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