New flooring can be really expensive.  From the cost of the flooring with delivery costs, to labour, underlay and trims, it can begin to add up.

But there’s no denying how great a brand new floor can make your home feel. Especially if the old floor was really past its best!

If you’re in the market for a new floor, but don’t want to break the bank, follow these five tips to make sure you reduce the costs as much as possible.

1. Work with what you have

Firstly, is your old floor salvageable?  Do you really need a new floor or could a professional clean make your carpets look like new?

If you have real wood flooring then you could be sitting on a gem.  Sanding and staining, or painting, the real wood floors could give you the flooring of your dreams!

Even tired tile floors can be rejuvenated.  Grout can be replaced, broken tiles fixed and period floor tiles restored.

Perhaps you don’t need to spend money on an entire new floor, but reinvent the flooring you already have.

2. Wait for the sales

If your home improvement project can wait, then waiting for the next carpet sale or engineered flooring sale could save you a small fortune.

If your flooring is currently full price then set up a price drop alert using a browser notifier or price drop alert website.  Price drop websites let you set up a wish list of products you want and they’ll email you as soon as the price drops.

You might also be able to afford a much higher quality product in a sale compared to buying at full price, which will save you money in the long run.

3. Buy quality in the first place

As the saying goes “buy cheap, buy twice”.  Or in our case, thrice! 

Yes, I am guilty of not following my own advice and so far, in six years, we’ve replaced our cheap bathroom vinyl floor three times.  I know it’s not ideal and we want to have a real tile floor, but it may involve lowering the floorboards, or something or other, so it’s on our home improvement list of costly jobs to do.

If you can afford to shop for a high quality floor in the first place then you will save yourself having to keep replacing a cheap floor that wears through quickly.  The extra investment will be worth it with many real tiled floors lasting a lifetime and there are even high quality vinyl tiles that have 35 year warranties nowadays!

We did take this advice with the flooring through the rest of our home and paid a little extra for much thicker high quality laminate flooring with a 25 year guarantee.  Six years in and it still looks good as new.

4. Make sure you buy enough!

Don’t make the expensive mistake of not ordering enough flooring.  If you’re fitting hard flooring or tiles, then allow a little extra for breakage and waste.

It can be expensive to have to order extra flooring a second time with additional delivery costs, minimum quantities and even a second round of floor fitting expenses if you’re paying a tradesperson to fit it for you.

The best advice here is to buy from a local flooring store if you can, so you can always pop back for more if needed.  That’s if they hold the stock in-store.

Also, if you are capable then you’ll save loads of cash by laying your new flooring yourself.  There are lots of guides online to help you learn how to lay laminate flooring, but only take on the challenge if you are competent.  You don’t want to end up paying anyway to fix a mess!

5. Check for cashback, even in store!

Always check a cashback website like Top Cashback and Quidco for cashback if you are ordering your flooring materials online.

Even if you are shopping in-store, check out this clever cashback money hack to see if you can save money shopping in-store too.

Here’s a list of UK cashback sites so you never miss out on free money back for your purchases again!