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The floor replacement questions Cypriot homeowners actually ask

What replacing a floor costs in Cyprus, what moves the figure up or down, and the checks worth making before you accept anybody's quote.

7 min read

New Floors in Cyprus: The Questions People Actually Ask — illustrasjonsbilde

Photo: Monica Silvestre on Pexels

ByStavros Loizou· Editor, kitchens, bathrooms and finishes

Stavros covers the rooms that carry the most cost per square metre and the finishes that go into them. He tracks the order trades have to arrive in, which moves a Cypriot renovation bill further than any hourly rate does.

Published

Most of what you pay to replace a floor in Cyprus is not the floor. Porcelain tile is recorded at roughly €22–70 per square metre supplied and laid, with the middle of our records near €38, and the tile you pick moves the total less than you would think. What separates two quotes for the same apartment is the strip-out, the condition of the screed underneath, and how the broken tile gets from a third floor down to the road.

The ten questions that come up most

Roughly in the order they arrive in the conversation.

  1. Can I lay a new floor over the one I already have?
  2. How much of the price is the tile itself?
  3. Will the doors still close afterwards?
  4. What happens at the veranda threshold?
  5. How long are we out of the room, or out of the whole flat?
  6. Is microcement sensible in a Cypriot house?
  7. Can I put timber down on a ground floor?
  8. Does anyone have to give me permission?
  9. Is there a wrong time of year for this?
  10. Why is one quote so much lower than the others?

Short answers

Laying over the old floor. Usually possible if the existing tiles are sound, firmly bonded and reasonably flat. It saves the noisiest, dirtiest and most expensive part of the job. The cost is height: tile on tile adds around 10–20 mm once the adhesive bed is counted, and that number decides several of the questions below.

How much is the tile. Less than people expect. Move up two grades of tile and you change the total noticeably but not dramatically. Move the job from an overlay to a full strip-out and you change it far more.

The doors. Internal doors can be taken off and trimmed, which is joinery rather than flooring and is often left out of the quote. External and balcony doors usually cannot be trimmed at all, because the frame is aluminium.

The veranda threshold. This is the one to worry about. Almost every Cypriot flat has a sliding door onto a veranda, and the internal floor sits a step below the outside level for a reason. Raise the inside without addressing the threshold and you have shortened the barrier that keeps winter rain out of the living room.

How long. Nobody can answer this from a photograph, and a contractor who gives you a figure before seeing the screed is guessing. The programme is set by the strip-out, whether levelling is needed once the old tile is off, the laying itself, grouting, and the days when nobody can walk on the floor. Ask for those waits shown as their own lines rather than folded into a single number, because the drying is the part that cannot be compressed.

Microcement. It works here, and it works best over a sound existing floor, because it is only millimetres thick and follows whatever is underneath. Movement in the substrate telegraphs straight through it. Ask what the preparation is, not what the finish looks like.

Timber on a ground floor. Depends entirely on the slab. Older houses were not always built with a damp-proof membrane, and moisture rising through a slab will cup engineered boards within a season. A moisture reading on the bare slab settles the argument before anyone orders boards.

Permission. Replacing a floor inside your own home is maintenance, not development, so planning permission does not come into it. What does come into it is the building's own rules and the municipality's: placing a skip on a public road generally needs municipal permission, and most apartment blocks have set working hours and conditions on using the lift for debris.

Time of year. Adhesive skins over fast in July and August, which is why tilers work the early part of the day and stop before the afternoon. Screeds and levelling compounds dry more slowly in humid coastal winters. Neither is a reason not to do the work; both are reasons a programme slips.

The low quote. Nearly always a smaller scope, not a cheaper contractor. Read what is missing before you read the total.

Where the answer depends

The substrate

Everything begins with what is under the old floor. Cypriot houses are almost universally tile on screed on a concrete slab, and the screed is the unknown quantity. It may be sound, it may be hollow in patches, and you will not know until the tiles come off.

That is why a careful contractor prices levelling separately, or writes it as a provisional item. Large-format tile in particular needs a flatter substrate than a standard format does, so it drags preparation work along behind it. Being told after strip-out that the floor needs levelling is not a contractor moving the goalposts. Being told it for the first time when the invoice arrives is.

The building

A ground-floor house in Aradippou and a third-floor flat in Strovolos are the same square metres and not remotely the same job. Nicosia's older suburbs are full of 1970s to 1990s blocks where the lift is small, the stairwell is shared, and every kilogram of broken tile leaves the building by hand. The labour in that is real and it belongs in the quote.

Ask, before you sign, where the skip is going, who protects the lift and the common stairs, and who talks to the management committee. If nobody has thought about it, the answer is that you will.

Where you are on the island

Access changes the price more than geography should. On the hillside plots around Peyia, delivery lorries cannot always reach the house, so pallets get broken down and carried, and that appears as a higher rate rather than a separate line. Near the coast, humidity slows drying and adhesive choice matters more. Inland, the temperature swing across a Nicosia year is the widest on the island, which is an argument for movement joints in a large continuous floor rather than for a different tile.

Our district and town pages exist because those differences are consistent enough to plan around, and the flooring section sets out what each finish involves before you start pricing it.

The season

Nothing here stops work, but the calendar shifts the programme. High summer compresses the working day. Winter stretches drying times. If you are combining the floor with anything else — a bathroom, a kitchen, rewiring — the floor goes in last, after the trades that make dust and drill walls, and that ordering is what usually decides the start date.

What nobody asks but should

Is the floor already worth keeping? A good number of older Cypriot houses have poured mosaic terrazzo under the carpet or under a later tile. Ground and polished, it comes back as a solid stone floor with no strip-out, no disposal and no build-up in height. It is worth lifting a corner before you price a replacement.

What does "supply and lay" actually include? Adhesive grade, grout, trims, thresholds, movement joints, skirting, sealing and disposal are all legitimately separate items. A quote that names them is not padded; a quote that does not name them is incomplete. Comparing three quotes only works when they describe the same scope.

Where does the dust go? Lifting a tiled floor produces fine dust that gets into every room, wardrobe and electrical socket in the flat. Ask about sheeting, door seals and whether extraction is used on the breaker. This is the single biggest difference between a tolerable three weeks and a miserable one.

Did you keep the spares? Order a spare box and keep it. Batches vary, ranges are discontinued, and the tile you need in year six for a cracked run of three will not exist. Store it somewhere dry and flat.

Who is actually doing it? Flooring is one of the trades where the person who quotes and the person who lays are often not the same. Ask who will be on site, and get three quotes rather than two so the middle one has something to sit between.

Common questions

Is it cheaper to tile over the old floor?

Almost always, because you avoid strip-out, disposal and the levelling that a bare screed usually needs. The trade-off is the 10–20 mm of extra height, which has to be resolved at doors and at the veranda threshold before you commit.

What has to be in a quote for it to be comparable?

Area in square metres, the tile or finish named by range and format, adhesive and grout specification, whether strip-out and disposal are included, levelling treated as either included or provisional, skirting and thresholds, and the number of working days. Three quotes written that way can be compared. Three totals cannot.

Can we live in the house while it is done?

Room by room, yes, though it costs more in setting up and taking down each time and it doubles the length of the disruption. Whole-flat replacement in one go is cheaper and faster, and most households move out for it.

Does underfloor heating change what I can lay?

Yes. Tile and microcement handle it comfortably. Engineered timber can work if the manufacturer allows it and the heating is commissioned properly. Solid timber is generally the wrong choice over a heated screed regardless of how it is fixed.

Who should I be asking for quotes?

Flooring contractors who work in your district, on the type of building you have. Our project pages set out what each finish involves and the district listings show who covers your area — three quotes for the same written scope is the comparison that tells you something.

Flooring contractors in Cyprus

6 companies covering this area.

Sources

  1. Cyprus Statistical Service — construction cost indices — retrieved 2026-07-24
  2. Cyprus Scientific and Technical Chamber (ETEK) — construction practice — retrieved 2026-07-24

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