How Much Does New Flooring Cost to Install?

Those totals are two numbers added together: what the floor itself sells for, and what we charge to put it down. The installation rates are ours, not an average pulled from other sites. The floor prices are what GTA flooring stores were asking in October 2026. We supply over 5,000 floors ourselves, and your exact price is fixed in a written quote. If you’re in Toronto and want the 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.

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

Here’s the floor and the installation added together, per square foot, before tax:

The floor price is the middle of the market: half of what Ontario stores list falls inside it. Premium lines go higher. Water-resistant laminate reaches about $6 a square foot for the floor alone, premium click vinyl about $8, wide-plank engineered about $11, wide French oak solid about $13, and designer large-format tile about $20.

Cheaper glue-down vinyl isn’t a mistake in the table. The plank costs less than a click plank, but gluing it down takes longer, so the installed totals end up close.

Here’s our installation rate per square foot. Taking up your old floor is part of it:

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. 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:

• taking up the old floor and taking it away, whether it’s carpet, laminate, hardwood, glued vinyl or tile
• 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

Subfloor levelling, if it’s needed, is priced in the same written quote, and the written quote is what you pay. The only exception is hidden damage we can’t see until the old floor is up, such as rot or water damage: we show it to you and price it before going any further.

The floor itself is on top of the installation. Pick from our range, or we’ll install one you’ve already bought.

A typical Toronto main floor is about 800 square feet. Floor and installation together, with the old floor taken up:

Installation alone on that floor is $2,560 for laminate or click vinyl, $3,920 for engineered glued and nailed, and $10,800 for tile. The rest is the floor you choose. 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 $6,000 floor works out to $500 a month over a year.

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; curved staircases run closer to $10,000. 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.

The floor you pick. On 800 square feet, the gap between a basic laminate and a wide-plank engineered board is bigger than any difference in installation rates.

For most rooms, click vinyl or laminate: about $6 to $8 a square foot installed, 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 price alone, though. The gap between laminate and engineered on 800 square feet is a few thousand dollars. The gap between a floor that suits the room and one that doesn’t is a redo.

The cheapest number you’ll find online is usually a “starting at” labour rate, with removal as a separate 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.

So put every quote in the same shape before you compare: the floor, the installation, taking up the old floor, levelling, stairs, and what happens if they find damage under the old floor. Ours has all of that on one page, and removal is already in the rate.

Then ask what the number doesn’t include. If they can’t answer in one breath, the number will move.

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 for the floor and the installation.

Get a free quote