Choosing new floors usually stalls at the same point: you know roughly how you want it to look, but not which material actually suits the room, the budget or the way you live. This page covers every flooring type we supply — timber, hybrid, laminate, vinyl, carpet, bamboo and cork — and what each one is genuinely good at.
We’re a family-run flooring supplier and installer based at 1/22 Leighton Place Hornsby, on Sydney’s upper North Shore. We supply and install across Sydney, and our installations are carried out by an ATFA licensed installer
| Type | Best suited to | Water resistance | Underfoot | Can be refinished |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Timber | Living areas, bedrooms, whole-home | Low | Warm, solid | Yes |
| Hybrid | Kitchens, high-traffic, families, pets | Waterproof | Firm, quiet with underlay | No |
| Laminate | Bedrooms, budget-conscious renovations | Water-resistant | Firm | No |
| Vinyl plank | Wet areas, rentals, commercial | Waterproof | Soft, quiet | No |
| Carpet | Bedrooms, stairs, upstairs living | Low | Softest, warmest | No |
| Bamboo | Living areas, sustainability-minded builds | Low–moderate | Warm, hard-wearing | Yes |
| Cork | Studies, playrooms, acoustic-sensitive rooms | Low | Soft, insulating | Sometimes |
Colours read completely differently under your own lighting than under showroom downlights, so it’s always worth seeing boards in person before deciding.
Real timber is still the benchmark. It’s the only flooring that gains character with age, adds resale value, and can be sanded back and refinished decades later rather than replaced.
You’re choosing between solid timber, milled from a single piece and able to be refinished many times over, and engineered timber, which bonds a real hardwood wear layer to a stable plywood core. Engineered is the more practical choice in most Sydney homes: it handles humidity swings better, suits wider planks, and can be laid as a floating floor over concrete slabs where solid boards can’t go.
We stock Hurford’s, Preference Floors, Quick-Step, Terramater, Australian Select Timbers, Flooring Lab, Premium Floors, Sunstar and Wonderwood Oak — European oak, Australian natives, hickory, and herringbone and chevron patterns.
This spec confuses most buyers, and it simply describes how many rows of boards appear across a single plank.
Quick-Step’s Readyflor range is available in all three formats, so you can choose the same species and finish in a completely different visual scale. Because timber is a natural product, no two floors come out identical.
Hybrid is the fastest-growing category in Australia. It’s genuinely waterproof, dimensionally stable in heat, and tough enough for kitchens, hallways and homes with pets — the rigid core won’t swell if a dishwasher leaks or a bath overflows. It’s the sensible answer for anyone wanting a timber look through the entire house, kitchen and laundry included.
We carry Wonderwood, Terramater Rigidcore, Preference Floors, Australian Select Timbers, Quick-Step Titan, Sunstar, Decoline, Pallas, Stone Floor and Dunlop, in plank, herringbone and tile-look formats.
Laminate delivers the most floor for the money. A quality 12mm board with a high-pressure wear layer stands up to serious traffic in finishes that would cost several times as much in real timber.
Thickness is what separates good laminate from disappointing laminate. 8mm suits bedrooms and low-traffic rooms; 12mm and 14mm feel substantially more solid underfoot and handle hallways and living areas properly.
We stock Quick-Step, Preference Floors Kronoswiss and Oak Leaf, Australian Select Timbers and Terramater Nucore.
Vinyl plank is fully waterproof, softer and quieter underfoot than hybrid or laminate, and forgiving on subfloors that aren’t perfectly level. It’s the standard choice for bathrooms, laundries, rental properties and commercial fit-outs where the floor has to survive constant use.
We supply Terramater Resiplank, Preference Floors, Premium Floors and Polyflor, including commercial-grade ranges built for high-traffic environments.
Nothing beats carpet for warmth, quiet and comfort underfoot, which is why it still dominates bedrooms, stairs and upstairs living areas even in homes with hard floors elsewhere.
The main decision is wool versus synthetic. Wool is naturally resilient, holds its appearance longer, resists soiling and feels noticeably better. Synthetic — nylon in particular — costs less, handles stains better and suits high-traffic households and rentals.
We stock Victoria Carpets, EC Carpets, House & Haven, Quest, Access and Providence across both wool and synthetic ranges, in plush, twist and loop constructions.
Bamboo is a genuinely fast-renewing resource, reaching maturity in a fraction of the time hardwood takes, and strand-woven bamboo is harder than most traditional hardwood species. It suits anyone wanting a natural timber floor with a stronger sustainability story.
If you’re replacing carpet with hard flooring in a Sydney apartment, your strata by-laws will usually set a minimum acoustic performance requirement, and approval typically depends on meeting it.
The floor covering alone rarely gets you there. The acoustic underlay underneath does most of the work, and the rating applies to the tested combination of the two rather than the boards on their own. Choosing a compliant floor and pairing it with the wrong underlay is the most common reason an owner ends up with a notice from their strata committee after the job is finished.
Floating Floors Direct holds a Level 4 licence with the Australian Timber Flooring Association, the highest qualification available in the Australian flooring industry. It covers subfloor preparation, moisture management, expansion gaps and material handling — the parts of a flooring job that determine whether a floor still looks right in ten years.
1/22 Leighton Place, Hornsby 2077
