The honest answer is that it depends on what is under your feet right now, and very few people know which one that is until someone gets down on their knees and looks.
Solid or engineered — the question that decides everything else
Solid wood flooring is exactly what it sounds like: a plank of timber, the same species and colour all the way through. Because there is no limit to how deep the wood goes, a solid floor can generally be sanded back and refinished several times over its working life, which is why so many original floorboards in Marylebone and Fitzrovia conversions are still going after a century of tenants.
Engineered wood flooring is a different construction. A thin layer of real hardwood — the wear layer — is bonded to a plywood or softwood base. It looks identical to solid wood once fitted, and it is genuinely better suited to some London flats, particularly over concrete or with underfloor heating. But the wear layer is finite. Depending on its thickness, an engineered floor may take one or two sandings in its lifetime, or none at all if it was laid with a thin, pre-lacquered veneer designed to be wiped clean rather than refinished. Sanding one of those floors too aggressively goes straight through the veneer into the base layer, and at that point there is no fix — only replacement. We cover the distinction in more depth in our guide to engineered versus solid wood flooring, and it is worth reading before anyone puts a sander anywhere near your floor.
What decides the answer in practice
Assuming you know which type you have, the decision usually comes down to four things.
- Condition, not just age. Gaps between boards, cupping, deep staining and gouges from furniture legs are all things a sand and refinish can genuinely fix, provided there is enough depth of wood left. Rot, woodworm damage, or boards that move underfoot are structural issues that sanding will not solve and may expose.
- How many times it has already been sanded. Solid boards thin with every sanding. If a previous owner or agent already had the floor done twice, a third pass may leave too little wood to take a finish properly, and tongues and grooves can start showing through.
- What is happening at the edges of the room. Sanding is a labour job on the floor you already have; new wood flooring is a supply-and-fit job that also touches skirtings, thresholds and sometimes door clearances. If you are already doing a wider refurbishment — new kitchen units, a bathroom refit — it is usually more efficient to sequence flooring in with that work rather than treat it as a separate project. Our guide to the order of works in a kitchen and bathroom refurbishment is written for exactly that kind of scheduling question.
- What the lease and the building require. This is the one owners most often miss, and it is the reason a decision that looks purely aesthetic can turn into a compliance conversation.
The acoustic rule nobody checks until the neighbour complains
Building Regulations Part E sets out resistance-to-sound requirements between separated dwellings, and it is the general basis for why so many Central London leases and management companies specify a minimum acoustic performance — usually delivered through an acoustic underlay — whenever a flat replaces carpet with hard flooring. A mansion block that was perfectly quiet with carpet throughout can generate real impact noise complaints once an upper flat is sanded, refinished, and left with nothing but a thin foam layer between the boards and the ceiling below. This is not a theoretical risk. It is one of the most common post-completion disputes in period conversions, and it is entirely avoidable if the underlay is specified correctly before, not after, the floor goes down. We set out what buildings typically require in our guide to acoustic underlay requirements in flats, and our separate piece on floor noise rules in mansion blocks covers what to check in your lease before you start, since some blocks require sign-off before any hard flooring is fitted at all, not just a specific underlay spec.
Squeaks are a symptom, not the disease
If the reason you are looking at this page is a squeaking board rather than a tired finish, sanding will not fix it, and neither will new flooring fitted the same way the old one was. A squeak is almost always a joist or subfloor issue — a board that has come loose from its fixing and is moving fractionally under weight. Our guide to squeaky floorboards explains what is usually happening underneath and why it is worth diagnosing properly before deciding whether you are sanding, refitting, or replacing.
When the floor is period parquet
Original parquet block flooring in Victorian and Edwardian Central London flats is its own category. It is solid wood, laid in a pattern rather than in long boards, and it can very often be restored rather than replaced, even where blocks have lifted or a section has been damaged by a previous leak. Because it is usually irreplaceable in the sense that matching reclaimed blocks to an existing pattern is a specialist job, restoration is nearly always the more sensible route where the underlying blocks are sound. We go into this in our guide to parquet restoration.
Getting a straight answer before you commit
The fastest way to find out which category your floor falls into is to have someone look at it rather than guess from a photo of the finish. Lift a board at the edge of a room where furniture has hidden it, or send us a close-up of the grain at a joint, and it is usually possible to tell solid from engineered and estimate how much wear layer or board depth is left. From there the pricing is straightforward: our floor sanding service and our wood flooring supply-and-fit service both carry published starting prices on our price list, so you can compare the cost of restoring what you have against replacing it before deciding either way.