Flooring cost in Australia, per square metre

What flooring costs in Australia

Flooring is priced per square metre, and the spread between the cheapest and dearest options is wider than almost any other renovation category. Installed pricing across Australia in 2026:

• Carpet — from around $45 per m² at entry level, up to $250 for premium wool.
• Laminate — roughly $55 to $110 per m². Cheapest hard floor, but not waterproof.
• Hybrid — roughly $60 to $150 per m², with most jobs landing $70 to $120. Waterproof, click-lock, and the reason it's become the default in wet zones.
• Engineered timber — roughly $110 to $220 per m².
• Tiles — roughly $100 to $200 per m² installed.
• Solid timber — can exceed $250 per m².

Most mid-range projects land between $80 and $150 per m² installed. For 100m², that's roughly $6,000 to $8,500 in hybrid, $6,000 to $8,000 in laminate, or $14,000 to $18,000 in engineered timber.

A lot of the gap is labour rather than product. Hybrid click-lock installs quickly at around $25 to $45 per m². Timber laying runs $40 to $60. Tiling is the slowest trade at $50 to $130 per m².

The cost you can't see until you lift the old floor

Ask anyone in the trade what blows flooring budgets and the answer is the same: the subfloor. It's the single most common source of cost variation, and it's invisible when you're getting quotes because it's underneath the floor you currently have.

The typical preparation costs, on top of the flooring itself:

• Subfloor levelling — $25 to $40 per m² for self-levelling compound on concrete out of tolerance
• Sanding an uneven timber subfloor — $10 to $20 per m²
• Lifting old carpet — around $8 to $12 per m² plus tip fees
• Removing old tiles — $30 to $60 per m², and consistently the line item people forget entirely
• Underlay, where not pre-attached — $2 to $10 per m²

On 100m², tile removal alone can add $3,000 to $6,000 to a job you'd budgeted purely on the price of the new floor.

What happens if you skip the levelling

James laid hybrid timber flooring himself at his Newcastle home about six years ago, for roughly $2,000 all in. It's a good example of DIY working — and of the one step you cannot skip.

He put the underlay down and started laying. About two square metres in, it became clear the subfloor wasn't level enough and the floor wasn't going to work. He pulled up what he'd laid, applied floor leveller, and started again.

His verdict: that 100% is what you need to do.

Two square metres is a cheap lesson — he caught it early enough that the only cost was time. The same mistake discovered at eighty square metres is a floor that has to come up. This is also exactly why the trade prices levelling as a separate line: a click-lock floating floor over an uneven substrate doesn't settle, it flexes, and the joints eventually fail.

Sanding existing hardwood: a real quote and three lessons

The same house had existing hardwood floors sanded and polished in 2022. Quotes ranged from $8,200 to $12,000, and he paid the lower end. He and his partner pulled up all the carpet and underlay themselves first, which is genuinely worth doing — it's the cheapest labour to remove from a quote.

Three things came out of that job worth knowing before you book yours.

They won't move your appliances. The stove wasn't moved, so there's a strip of unsanded floor behind it that he still has to finish himself. If you want a floor sanded wall to wall, everything has to be out — and "everything" includes the things nobody thinks of as furniture. Confirm in writing what the contractor will and won't shift.

Decide about gap filling yourself. He was talked out of filling the gaps between boards, and regrets it. On an older hardwood floor those gaps collect dust and dirt permanently, and filling them is far cheaper as part of the sanding job than as a separate exercise afterwards. It's a legitimate choice either way — some people prefer the character of an unfilled floor — but make it deliberately.

The floor needs to cure, and that means leaving. A freshly polished floor needs a couple of weeks before it's fully hardened, and during that period it scratches easily. He timed the job around being away, which meant the floor cured undisturbed. If you can't leave, plan how the household is going to live around a floor you can't put furniture back on.

His broader conclusion on the job: the company was rough, and next time he'd talk to a few more people before choosing. Worth remembering that a $3,800 spread between quotes doesn't tell you which one does the better work.

A second real figure

Keryn had flooring done at her Coffs Harbour home about ten years ago for $4,000. She didn't get comparison quotes, and it's the one job on her list she'd repeat without changes.

Worth noting what that figure does and doesn't tell you. It's a decade old, and flooring product and labour have both moved since. But it's a useful reminder that flooring is one of the few renovation categories where a modest budget genuinely buys a finished result — unlike a kitchen or a bathroom, there's no plumbing or waterproofing underneath it to go wrong.

Frequently asked questions

These figures are planning estimates, not quotes — read how we build our ranges, then confirm real costs with local, itemised quotes.