Wooden Floor Restoration Costs in the UK

Quick Cost Breakdown

• Sanding on its own costs £12 - £16 per m2.
• Varnishing gives you the toughest, most durable result at £15 - £20 per m².
• Oiling costs a bit more at £18 - £23 per m², but the trade-off is a natural look.
• The condition of your existing boards is the single biggest factor in the final price.

Your Hardwood Floor Restoration Cost Guide

In this cost guide, we’ll cover:

1. What’s The Average Cost Of Hardwood Floor Restoration?
2. Sanding, Oiling Or Varnishing - What's The Price Difference?
3. What Makes Wooden Floor Restoration More Expensive?
4. How Much Will Wooden Floor Restoration Cost For My Room Size?
5. Can You Restore Parquet And Engineered Wood Floors?
6. Is It Cheaper To Restore A Wooden Floor Yourself?
7. Find Wooden Floor Specialists Near You on MyBuilder
8. FAQ: Common Questions About Wooden Floor Restoration

What’s The Average Cost Of Hardwood Floor Restoration?

The cost of restoring your hardwood floor varies depending on its age, the level of wear, and what kind of finish you're after. A floor with light surface scratches needs far less work than one with deep damage, warped boards, or years of old finishes built up on top of each other.

To give you an idea, most homeowners pay between £15 and £42 per m² for a full sand-and-refinish, with the finish you choose being the main thing that moves the price.

Here's how the numbers break down:

Type of Work	Average Cost per m²
Sanding only	£12-£16
Sanding and varnishing	£15-£20
Sanding and oiling	£18-£23
Full sand and refinish	£40-£65
Staining (colour change)	£4-£8

A full refinish typically includes repairs to damaged boards, gap filling, and multiple coats of finish. However, if your floor is in decent condition and just needs freshening up, you'll be at the lower end of the cost scale.

Sanding, Oiling Or Varnishing - What's The Price Difference?

Once a floor has been sanded back to bare wood, it needs a protective finish. This is where you've got choices, and each one comes with a different price tag, look, and level of upkeep, all of which feed into the overall hardwood floor restoration cost.

Sanding Only: £12 - £16 per m²

Sanding strips away the old surface, scratches, scuffs, old varnish, the lot, and gets you back to clean, bare wood. On its own it's the cheapest option, but bare wood won't stay looking good for long without some kind of protection on top.

Sanding alone really only makes sense if you're planning to apply the finish yourself.

Sanding and Varnishing: £15 - £20 per m²

Varnish sits on top of the wood and creates a hard, sealed surface. It's the most durable option and handles heavy foot traffic better than anything else. If you're weighing up the cost to restore hardwood floors and want something low-maintenance, varnish is hard to beat.

However, if it gets damaged, you can’t just do a patch repair - the entire floor needs to be re-varnished.

Sanding and Oiling: £18 - £23 per m²

Oil soaks into the grain rather than sitting on the surface, which gives a softer, more natural look. A lot of people prefer it because it lets the character of the wood come through.

The real advantage over varnish is repairability, if you get a scratch or a watermark, you can sand and re-oil just that spot without touching the rest of the floor.

Staining - £4: £8 per m² (on top of sanding and finishing)

Staining changes the colour of the wood before the protective finish goes on. It's useful if you want to darken a pale floor, warm up the tone, or match existing woodwork in the room. This step adds to the overall cost of wooden floor restoration, but it's entirely optional.

Gap Filling - £4: £25 per m²

Older floors almost always have gaps between boards from years of the wood expanding and contracting with the seasons. Smaller gaps can be filled with a flexible filler, while wider ones might need slivers of matching timber or resin.

Not sure which finish is right for your floor? A floor fitter near you will be able to assess the condition and type of your wood and recommend the best option for your space and budget. You can request quotes from local flooring tradespeople on MyBuilder to get tailored advice and quotes before committing to anything.

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What Makes the Cost of Wooden Floor Restoration More Expensive?

Every floor tells a different story, and the cost of wooden floor restoration can change quite a bit depending on a tradesperson’s assessment.

Here are the main things that push the price up:

• Condition of the floor: A wooden floor with light surface wear, minor scratches, a bit of dullness, is a straightforward sand-and-finish job. Damaged or rotten boards may need replacing entirely before sanding can even start, which can add £100 - £300+ to the total depending on how many need swapping out.

• Type of wood: Harder timbers like oak and walnut are more durable but take longer to sand, which means more labour time. Softer woods like pine sand faster but dent and scratch more easily, so they may need more careful finishing.

• Floor layout and pattern: A room full of straight planks is the quickest and easiest to sand. Parquet or herringbone flooring is a different matter, the sander has to follow the pattern of the blocks, which takes significantly more time and skill. Expect to pay a 20–30% premium over standard plank restoration.

• Carpet and underlay removal: If there's old carpet sitting on top of your hardwood floor, it needs to come up before any restoration work begins. Removing carpet and underlay typically costs around £6-£13 per m², or roughly £85-£200 per room. Take a look at carpet removal costs.

• Where you live: The hardwood floor restoration cost in London and the South East is noticeably higher than the rest of the country. Daily rates for flooring tradespeople in the capital tend to sit around £180–£220, compared to £100–£180 elsewhere.

If you're unsure about the specific costs to your hardwood floor restoration project, the best approach is to get a few tradespeople round to take a look.

Most will give you a quote for free once they've seen the condition of the floor in person. You can post your job on MyBuilder to compare different floor fitters in your area.

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How Much Will Wooden Floor Restoration Cost For My Room Size?

The cost to restore hardwood floors gets higher with the size of the room, but it's not always a straight multiplication. Larger rooms tend to work out cheaper per square metre because the setup time, getting equipment in, taping up skirting boards, dust-sheeting doorways, is the same whether you're doing 10 m² or 40 m².

Here's what you can expect to pay based on typical UK room sizes.

Room Size	Typical Cost (Sand + Finish)
Small bedroom (10 m²)	£150-£230
Medium living room (20 m²)	£300-£460
Large reception room (30 m²)	£450-£690
Open-plan ground floor (40 m²)	£600-£920

Note: If you're thinking about restoring wooden floors across several rooms, or an entire ground floor, it's worth asking for a package price. Having three rooms done together could save you 10 - 15% compared to booking each one separately.

Can You Restore Parquet And Engineered Wood Floors?

One of the most common questions homeowners ask is whether their particular type of wooden floor can actually be restored. The good news is that most can, but the approach, the limitations, and the hardwood floor restoration cost all depend on what you've got underfoot.

Parquet Flooring Restoration Cost

Parquet is one of the most rewarding floors to restore, when it's done well, the result is stunning. But it's also one of the most labour-intensive. Each block has its own grain direction, which means the sander can't just run in straight lines like it would on a plank floor. For a full parquet restoration, expect to pay around £35-£55 per m² - roughly 30-50% more than a standard plank floor. If you've got a herringbone or basket weave pattern, it's worth specifically looking for a floor fitter near you who has experience with parquet rather than someone who mainly does straight plank work.

Engineered Wood Floor Restoration Cost

Engineered boards are made up of a thin layer of real hardwood on top of a plywood or softwood base. That top layer is typically 2-6 mm thick, and you need at least 1.5 mm remaining after sanding for the floor to stay structurally sound. In practice, that means most engineered floors can be sanded once or twice in their lifetime.

The cost of wooden floor restoration for engineered boards is similar to solid wood, around £15 - £23 per m² for sanding and finishing, but a good tradesperson will always check the wear layer before committing to the job.

If it's too thin, sanding will cut through to the plywood underneath, and at that point you're looking at replacement rather than restoration. Our flooring installation cost guide covers what that would set you back.

Is It Cheaper To Restore A Wooden Floor Yourself?

Restoring your hardwood floor seems like a smaller investment upfront. You can hire a floor sander from most tool hire shops for around £44 - £56 per day, pick up sandpaper discs for a few pounds, and tins of finish yourself.

All in, a DIY sand-and-finish on a 20 m² room might cost £100 - £200 in materials and equipment hire, compared to £300 - £460 for a professional to do the same job.

So why doesn't everyone just do it themselves?

Drum sanders are heavy, powerful machines, and they're not forgiving. The most common DIY mistakes are sanding unevenly, burning through the wear layer on engineered boards, and leaving scratch marks from skipping grits too quickly. All of these show up the moment the finish goes on, and by then it's too late.

A professional will have industrial-grade equipment with dust extraction, the experience to read the grain, and the ability to get a flat, even result half the time.

Note: For a spare bedroom or low-traffic room, DIY might be worth a go. For a floor that you want to preserve, the cost to restore hardwood floors professionally is money well spent, and most tradespeople will include a guarantee in their work.

Find Wooden Floor Specialists Near You on MyBuilder

Getting the right tradesperson for your wooden floor restoration makes all the difference - and MyBuilder makes it easy to find one. Post your job with a few photos and details about your floor, and you'll receive quotes from local flooring specialists who've been reviewed by other homeowners.

You can also browse photos of their previous floor restoration work, compare prices side by side, and read honest feedback before committing.

All tradespeople on MyBuilder undergo checks at registration - such as ID documents, company details, certifications for regulated jobs and skill assessments - allowing you to hire with confidence.

Find wooden floor specialists

FAQ: Common Questions About Wooden Floor Restoration

How long does hardwood floor restoration take?

Most single rooms take 1–2 days, one day for sanding and a second for applying the finish and allowing it to dry. Larger spaces or floors that need significant repair work can take 3–5 days. Oil finishes are generally quicker to apply but need longer between coats, while varnish dries faster but needs 2 - 3 coats for a proper result.

How often do hardwood floors need restoring?

It depends on the finish and how much traffic the floor gets. A varnished floor in good condition can go 8–15 years between restorations. Oiled floors last just as long structurally, but the oil itself needs topping up every 12-18 months to maintain protection, that's a quick job you can do yourself rather than a full restoration.

If your floor is just looking a bit tired rather than visibly damaged, a light buff and recoat might be all it needs, which is cheaper and faster than a full sand-back.

Can you restore a floor that's been under carpet for years?

Floors hidden under carpet are often in surprisingly good condition because the carpet has protected them from UV fading and everyday wear.

The main things to watch out for are staining from old underlay adhesive, damage from carpet gripper rods around the edges, and any moisture issues that may have gone unnoticed. A flooring specialist will be able to assess whether the boards are worth restoring once the carpet is up.

Is it worth restoring original floorboards?

In most cases, restoration is significantly cheaper. The cost of wooden floor restoration for a 20 m² room typically comes in at £300-£650, whereas replacing with new solid hardwood could cost £1,20 -£2,500+ including materials and fitting. Restoration also keeps the character and patina of the original wood, which is especially valuable in period properties.

The only time replacement makes more sense is if the boards are severely warped, rotten, or too thin to sand.

Will floor sanding make a lot of dust?

Modern professional sanders come with built-in dust extraction systems that capture around 95-98% of the dust at source.Your tradesperson should seal doorways with dust sheets and you'll want to give the space a thorough clean afterwards. If dust is a particular concern, ask specifically about dustless sanding when requesting quotes.

How do I know if my floorboards are worth restoring?

There are a few quick checks you can do yourself. Press down on individual boards to feel for any sponginess, that's a sign of rot. Look for boards that are badly warped, cracked along their length, or have large chunks missing. If the damage is limited to a handful of boards, those can be replaced individually and the rest restored around them.

If more than about 20-30% of the floor is in poor condition, full replacement might work out more cost-effective. Want a specialist to assess your floor? Post your job on MyBuilder and compare local floor restoration experts for free.

What is the most popular hardwood floor colour right now?

Natural oak tones are by far the most popular choice in the UK right now. This is because warm, mid-toned finishes that let the grain show through rather than masking it. Matte and satin oil finishes are also in demand because they give a more contemporary, lived-in feel.