Kitchen flooring cost

Kitchen flooring costs $4 to $20 a square foot installed, typically around $9. A 200 square foot kitchen therefore runs $800 to $4,000, and the material you pick moves it more than anything else on the list.

The kitchen is the hardest floor in the house: it gets water, grease, dropped pans and traffic. Some materials that are excellent elsewhere are a poor choice here.

What it costs

What suits a kitchen

Luxury vinyl plank is the pragmatic modern answer. Fully waterproof, warm and quiet underfoot, forgiving of an imperfect subfloor, and convincing at the better end of the range. It dents under a dropped cast iron pan and it is not repairable in the way wood is.

Porcelain tile is the most durable thing you can put in a kitchen. It is impervious to water, it survives anything, and it is hard, cold and unforgiving of dropped glassware. Grout lines need sealing and they will show wear at the entry point.

Laminate looks like wood, costs like vinyl, and is the one material that is genuinely a bad choice in a kitchen unless it is a waterproof-rated product. Water at a seam swells the core and it does not recover.

Hardwood is beautiful and it is a maintenance commitment in a kitchen. Engineered wood handles humidity better than solid and can usually be refinished once.

Sheet vinyl is the cheapest genuinely waterproof option with no seams to fail. It looks cheap because it is, and in a rental or a utility kitchen that is the right trade.

Where the money actually goes

Material is roughly half of an installed price. The other half:

Removal. Pulling up tile bedded in mortar is the worst of these and can cost as much as the new floor. Vinyl over plywood comes up in an afternoon.

The subfloor. Tile needs a flat, stiff subfloor or the grout cracks. If the existing floor deflects, the fix is another layer of plywood or cement board, and that is $3 to $10 a square foot before anything decorative happens.

Height. Adding thickness means the dishwasher may no longer come out from under the counter, and the doors need trimming. This is a real problem that gets discovered on the day.

Under the cabinets or not. Running the floor under the cabinets costs more material and makes a future kitchen change far easier. Stopping at the cabinet line saves money and locks the layout in.

Frequently asked questions

Should the floor go under the cabinets?

If the cabinets are being replaced anyway, yes, run the floor first and set the cabinets on it. If the cabinets are staying, cutting around them is standard practice and perfectly acceptable.

Can I lay a new floor over the old one?

Over vinyl or well-bonded tile, sometimes, and it adds height. Over anything loose, never. The height issue is what usually decides it: an extra half inch under a dishwasher matters.

Is tile too cold for a kitchen?

In a cold climate, noticeably. An electric underfloor heating mat is $10 to $20 a square foot and is much cheaper to fit while the floor is up than afterwards. In a 200 square foot kitchen you would only heat the standing areas.

What is the most durable option?

Porcelain tile, by a distance. Luxury vinyl plank is the most forgiving. Those are different questions and most households want the second one.

How long does it take?

Vinyl or laminate in a kitchen is one to two days. Tile is three to five, because the mortar and grout have to cure and you cannot walk on it in between. Plan for the kitchen being unusable for that period.