Flooring Estimate Template

What goes on a flooring estimate

A flooring estimate has to hold up twice: once next to the other bids on the customer’s kitchen table, and again when the old floor comes up. The job-specs strip under the header handles the first. Measured area, the product, the rooms, the subfloor and what is being removed are what a homeowner compares. The phases handle the second.

• Removal and prep: tearing out each existing floor, disposal, and a leveling allowance for the slab or subfloor you cannot see yet.
• Installation: flooring material by the box, underlayment, setting materials for tile, and labor by the measured square foot.
• Trim, transitions and other: quarter round or baseboard, transitions at doorways, and the toilet or appliances that have to come out and go back.

Anything the customer might add, such as new baseboard or a second bathroom, goes in the optional-items table, priced but outside the total, so they can say yes without a rewrite.

How to measure a floor and order material

Measure room by room, closets included, wall to wall. Measure kitchens to the cabinet faces unless the floor runs under the cabinets. That measured area is what the customer is buying and what you price labor on. Material is different, because it comes in full boxes and every room produces offcuts. Boxes = measured square feet × (1 + waste) ÷ square feet per box, rounded up. Here is how the waste percentage changes the order for the completed example’s 1,129 square feet of plank at 23.64 square feet per box:

The Floor Takeoff sheet does this for two products at once, Floor A and Floor B. It also sums tear-out by the floor coming out, because carpet and glued tile are priced very differently. Trim is each room’s perimeter minus doors and open sides. Underlayment is area ÷ roll coverage. Thinset and grout come from the coverage printed on the bag for your trowel and joint size. Self-leveler is area × average depth ÷ 12 ÷ the bag’s yield in cubic feet. Every coverage figure is an editable input, because it varies by product. Check the carton and the bag.

Pricing a flooring job line by line

Price removal by what is coming out: carpet and pad come up fast, while ceramic tile and its thinset take several times the labor and make far more debris. Put material on its own line at the boxes you order, and labor on the measured area, so the customer can compare products and installers separately. Build every unit price from cost on the Unit Price Builder: material, plus labor hours at your fully loaded rate, plus consumables and disposal, then overhead, then profit as a margin on price rather than a markup.

The completed example is a single-story home on a slab. Carpet and ceramic tile come out, 1,129 square feet of 20-mil rigid-core LVP goes into the living areas and bedrooms, and 60 square feet of porcelain tile goes into the primary bath. Removal and prep come to $2,374.75, installation to $8,844.10, and trim, transitions and the toilet reset to $1,322.50. That is $12,541.35 in total, or about $10.55 per measured square foot all-in. The plank is 53 boxes at $82.50 and its labor 1,129 square feet at $2.40. There is no tax line because the contractor pays tax on materials and includes it in the prices. The 40% deposit is $5,016.54, due on acceptance to order material.

The leveling allowance, and what shows up after tear-out

Nobody knows how flat the slab or subfloor is until the old floor is up, and rigid-core plank and large-format tile both need a flat floor. The manufacturer’s installation instructions set the tolerance. Many also require a moisture test on concrete, so check them before you price. Write the uncertainty into the estimate: a fixed number of bags of self-leveler in the price, a per-bag price beyond that, and photos. Anything bigger, such as a cracked slab or a soft subfloor, gets written up as a change order and signed before the work. When the floor is done, bill the balance on an invoice that references the estimate number and lists any approved changes.

Estimate, quote or proposal?

For a homeowner, this estimate is usually the whole sale: a price, the terms and a signature. When you bid a GC on a tenant improvement or an apartment turn, priced from drawings and a finish schedule, build your cost on the construction estimate worksheet. Then send a construction quote or a bid proposal with inclusions, exclusions and alternates instead.

Common mistakes on flooring estimates

• Charging labor on ordered square feet. The customer pays labor on the floor they have, not on the waste.
• One removal price for every floor. Glued tile is not carpet.
• No leveling allowance. Without one, every low spot becomes a negotiation mid-job.
• Forgetting trim, transitions and the toilet. They are small lines that add up, and they are where a cheaper bid is usually thin.
• Ordering the job in two batches. A later production run may not match, so order it all at once and leave the extra boxes with the owner for repairs.
• No valid-until date. Material prices move, and an open-ended estimate can be held to old ones.