The floor goes down before the units, across the whole room.

Choosing the floor

Porcelain tiles: the most common, resist everything, formats from 20 × 20 to 120 × 120, stone, concrete or wood effect. Cold underfoot without underfloor heating.

Parquet: engineered or solid oak, oiled or lacquered. Warm, beautiful, and entirely possible in a kitchen if the joints around the sink are done and you wipe up what falls. It often continues the living room's in an open kitchen.

Vinyl in planks or tiles: the cheapest, quiet, quick to lay on a flat floor. The right choice for a tight budget or a rental.

Cement tiles and polished concrete: the floors with character of the maisons de maître. Old tiles can be restored and treated; polished concrete is poured on a sound base and needs a true specialist.

Joining the existing floor

In an open kitchen, the kitchen floor meets the living room's. Three ways: continue the same floor everywhere, the most beautiful when everything is redone; set a clean threshold, brass, stainless or wood, between the two; or make a flush junction to the millimetre, when both floors have the same thickness. Levelling is for that: bringing both to the same height before laying.

What is underneath

In 1960s blocks, a screed on hollow-core slabs, usually sound. In 1900 houses, a timber floor on joists, sometimes a thin screed on top, sometimes rising damp. We probe at the visit. Tiles laid on a floor that moves crack in one winter: then a decoupling membrane or a light screed is needed. Parquet laid on a damp screed cups in a month: we measure the moisture beforehand.

What it costs

In our quotes, supplied and laid excl. VAT: tiles 85 to 120 € per m², engineered oak parquet 100 to 140 €, vinyl 40 to 70 €, new cement tiles 150 to 250 €, polished concrete 120 to 200 €. Removing the old floor and levelling is priced 25 to 45 € per m² on top. For a 10 m² kitchen, the complete floor therefore comes to between 1,100 and 1,700 € in tiles.