Should the flooring go under the kitchen units or up to them?
The answer differs for a floating floor and a bonded one, and getting it wrong either traps the floor under the units or leaves a step that stops an appliance coming out.
- Difficulty
- beginner
- Time
- 20 min
- Read
- 3 min
Short answer
Run a bonded floor — tile, glue-down LVT, sheet vinyl — under the whole kitchen including the appliance spaces. Do not run a floating floor under fitted units, because the units' weight pins the raft and stops it moving. Instead, lay the floating floor up to the units and into every appliance recess at full height.
This decision is made once, when the kitchen goes in, and it is expensive to revisit. It turns on one mechanical fact: a floating floor has to be free to move, and anything heavy standing on it stops it moving. A bonded floor does not care.
Step by step
- Establish whether your floor floats or is bonded.Click laminate, click LVT and floating engineered wood all float. Tile, sheet vinyl and glue-down LVT are bonded. This is the entire basis of the decision.
- For a bonded floor, lay it everywhere.Under the units, into the appliance recesses, right to the walls. It is continuous, it cannot be pinned, and it means the kitchen can be changed in twenty years without a floor level problem.
- For a floating floor, stop at the units.Lay up to the front of the carcase or the plinth line, with the expansion gap maintained and hidden by the plinth. A floating floor trapped under a run of loaded units cannot expand, and the result is peaking or opened joints somewhere else in the room.
- Always run the floor into every appliance recess, at full height.This is the mistake with the highest cost. An integrated dishwasher, washing machine or fridge sitting on the subfloor, with a raised floor around it, cannot be pulled out for service without damaging the floor edge, and a replacement appliance may not fit back in the reduced opening.
- Think about the freestanding cooker slot too.A cooker has to slide out. Run the floor into and through that gap at full height, or the cooker sits low, is not level with the worktop and cannot be pulled forward.
- Set the plinth height after the floor.Kitchen legs are adjustable and the plinth is cut to suit. The correct order is floor first where possible, then set the leg height, then cut the plinth. Where the units are already in, the plinth is re-cut instead.
- Seal the floor edge in a kitchen properly.Water gets under a plinth. Whichever way the floor stops, the junction wants a flexible seal or a fully waterproof detail, because that edge is the one that fails when a dishwasher weeps.
- Where the kitchen is already fitted, work to the plinth line.Take the plinths off, lay the floor into the recess to the front of the legs, maintain the expansion gap, and refit or re-cut the plinths. The whole floor need not come out.
Common mistakes
- Running a floating floor under a full run of loaded base units — The weight pins the raft. It cannot expand towards that wall, so it expands somewhere else — usually peaking in the middle of the room or lifting at a doorway.
- Stopping the floor at the front of an appliance recess — The appliance sits low, cannot be pulled out without damaging the floor edge, and the next appliance may not fit into the reduced height. This is the single most expensive mistake in kitchen flooring.
- Fitting the plinth before the floor — The plinth is cut to a floor height that no longer exists. Either it stands proud on the new floor or there is a gap under it.
Questions people ask
What if I want to change the kitchen later without changing the floor?
That is the argument for a bonded floor laid throughout — the new kitchen sits on a continuous floor with no level changes to work around. With a floating floor stopped at the plinth line, a new kitchen with a different footprint means patching or relaying.
Does an island sit on the floor or on the subfloor?
Same rule. On a bonded floor, on top. On a floating floor, an island is a heavy fixed load in the middle of a raft, and it should sit on the subfloor with the floating floor laid up to it and the gap covered.
Is it a problem that the previous floor was laid under the units?
Only if it is a floating floor. If it is, expect the raft to be pinned and to have limited expansion capacity, which is worth knowing when diagnosing peaking or lifting elsewhere in the room.