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How long does it take to lay a floor in a room?

A professional typically lays 20-40 m² of click flooring a day; laying it yourself for the first time, plan on 8-15 m² a day — plus 48 hours of acclimatising the flooring beforehand.

The schedule has five steps, not one

People think of flooring as "a day's work" because the laying itself is a day. But the flooring also has to be delivered, acclimatise, get a subfloor, be laid, and get skirting. Those five steps happen in sequence, and three of them are waiting time.

1. Delivery and acclimatisation: typically 48 hours; some manufacturers say 24, others 72.
2. Clearing and removing the old floor: ½-1 day for a 20 m² room.
3. Levelling the subfloor (if needed): ½ day of work plus 1-3 days of drying.
4. The laying itself: ½-1 day for 20 m² of click flooring, 1½-2½ days for herringbone.
5. Skirting boards and transition strips: ½ day.

A 20 m² room with a level subfloor and click flooring: the floor is delivered Monday, laid Wednesday, skirted Thursday. The same room with an old glued floor that needs ripping up and levelling: Monday delivery, Tuesday removal, Wednesday levelling, Thursday-Friday drying, Monday laying. That's a week and a half — not because the work takes long, but because the drying time does.

Acclimatisation is not negotiable

Wood floors, engineered wood and most laminates need to sit in the room they'll be laid in, typically for 48 hours before laying — either unopened or opened, depending on what the manufacturer specifies. The reason is that wood absorbs and releases moisture, and a plank laid straight off a cold, dry lorry will later expand and press against the walls.

The room needs to be in normal use at the same time: typically 18-22 °C and roughly 30-60% relative humidity (the supplier's instructions give the precise range). If the room has underfloor heating, it generally needs to have been run up and back down following a set warm-up schedule before the flooring goes in — that schedule is in both the flooring's instructions and the heating's, and both have to be followed.

Click vinyl is the big exception: many vinyl products need only 24 hours, and some need no acclimatisation at all. Check the label.

How fast does the laying itself go?

Rough figures for one person in an ordinary room with no extreme cutting:

• Floating click flooring, straight lay, professional: 20-40 m² a day.
• Floating click flooring, straight lay, DIY first time: 8-15 m² a day.
• Diagonal lay: 60-70% of the speed of a straight lay.
• Glued plank flooring: 15-25 m² a day for a professional.
• Glued herringbone or chevron: 8-15 m² a day for a professional — the pattern has to be set out, and every plank is glued individually.
• Skirting boards: 20-40 linear metres a day including mitring and caulking.

Small rooms are slower per square metre than large ones. A 4 m² bathroom can take just as long as a 12 m² living room, because almost every single plank has to be cut around a pipe, a door frame or a fixed fitting.

What causes delays

• A subfloor that turns out to be uneven. The most common delay. Check flatness with a 2 m straightedge at five points in the room before you book the contractor — that way levelling can be planned in rather than turning up as a surprise.
• Moisture in the concrete slab. A moisture reading can stall the whole project for weeks. Get it measured early.
• Doors that need trimming. Allow ½-1 hour per door, and plan it as its own step — not something squeezed in at the end of the day.
• Flooring delivered in two batches. Always order the full quantity including wastage and a spare pack in one go. A reorder costs both delivery time and the risk of a different batch with a slightly different colour.
• Too little flooring. The classic mistake: 20 m² of floor area is not 20 m² of flooring. Add 5-10% wastage for a straight lay, 10-15% for diagonal, and 15-20% for herringbone, and round up to whole packs.

How long does it take for a whole home?

If the flooring is being replaced throughout the home, it isn't just the sum of the rooms — there's also furniture to move, a consistent direction to keep, and the home needs to remain usable along the way.

Rough estimate for a professional, click flooring, level subfloor:

• 60 m²: 2-3 days laying + 1 day skirting = 3-4 working days.
• 100 m²: 3-5 days laying + 1-2 days skirting = 4-7 working days.
• 150 m²: 5-7 days laying + 2 days skirting = 7-9 working days.

If the old floor has to be ripped up and the subfloor levelled, you can comfortably double that — and add the drying time on top as waiting time, not as working days.

How to give the contractor a brief that keeps the schedule

Most delays come from a quote based on a guess at the area and a guess at the subfloor. So always provide:

1. The floor area per room, measured internally — not the area from the public building register, which is usually measured externally and therefore comes out larger.
2. The room's perimeter in linear metres, for the skirting boards.
3. The number of doorways that need a transition strip, and the number of doors that need trimming.
4. What's on the floor today, and whether it needs removing.
5. The largest unevenness you've measured with the straightedge.

The first three points are exactly what a takeoff for a contractor's quote consists of, and they can be read straight off a measured floor plan. HouseSense produces that plan by scanning the home with your iPhone's LiDAR, or by you drawing the rooms with your finger and entering the measured centimetres, and the takeoff can be sent as a report to several contractors, so everyone is pricing the same square metres. Points 4 and 5 you have to establish yourself on site: they're about the construction, not the geometry.