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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Dundee and across the UK. We work with universities, colleges, schools and leisure operators, planning each project as a complete visit.
Since 1987 we have worked on indoor sports floors the length of the country and internationally. We remain family-run and deliberately specialist, covering installation through to long-term aftercare with our own team and machinery. We take no domestic work; Ryan’s Restorations covers that.
Overnight/Weekend Installations
Professional Cleaning Demonstrations
Squash Court Maintenance
Recommended Cleaning Products
Professional Pendulum Slip Testing
Deep Clean & Reseal Service
An education sports hall is rarely used only for sport. Examinations, assemblies, catering and events all land on the same floor, and furniture rather than activity causes most of the damage we repair.
Specifying honestly means choosing a finish tough enough for chairs and staging while retaining acceptable grip and shock absorption for activity, and being explicit about that compromise rather than pretending it does not exist.
Protective covering laid over the playing surface for exams, events and catering prevents almost all furniture damage and lifts quickly afterwards. It costs a fraction of the repairs it avoids and is routinely skipped.
We advise on the right type for your surface, how to handle and store it so the covering itself does not mark the floor, and where it genuinely is not worth the effort.
Vacation periods are short and immovable, so a refurbishment has to be sequenced with contingency deliberately built in rather than assumed. Curing cannot be rushed without damaging a finish that has just been paid for.
We confirm the programme and handover date in writing before starting, and phase larger facilities so part of the space stays usable throughout.
The sports hall floor at Treguib had given years of service and looked it. Our team took it back to clean timber, repaired the wear, then resealed and re-marked the full hall.
The result is a floor that plays and looks like new for a fraction of replacement cost, delivered a long way from our base and still on the date we promised.
~ Matthew Evans
An outstanding company to deal with and they couldn’t have been better to work with. St George’s Ascot now has a stunning new sports hall floor and we are delighted. From quote, support, delivery and after sales, the Team has been brilliant. Thank you. 
~ James Anderson
Most enquiries reach us as a description of a symptom, and there are a few things that let us give a genuinely useful reply rather than a holding one.
Photographs are the most valuable. Two or three of the whole room, and two or three close up of whatever is worrying you, tell us more than several paragraphs. If there is a worn patch, a stain, a lifting board or a dead spot, photograph that specifically.
Approximate dimensions, or just the number of badminton courts, gives us the area. The rough age of the floor and whether anybody knows what is underneath helps. If you have any record of previous work, even a decade old invoice, that is genuinely useful.
Then tell us what the room is used for and when it could realistically be closed. Those two facts shape the recommendation as much as the condition does.
From that we can usually give an informed steer and a budget range before arranging a survey.
Underfloor heating and timber sports floors can work together, but the combination has to be designed rather than assumed, and we see the consequences when it is not.
Timber moves with moisture content, and heating from below drives moisture out of the boards. If the system is run too hot, or brought up too quickly at the start of a season, boards shrink, gaps open and in extreme cases the floor cups or splits. None of that is repairable by refinishing.
The requirements are straightforward. Surface temperature has to be limited and controlled, the system needs commissioning and gradual warming rather than being switched on in October at full output, and the timber needs to be specified as suitable for use over heating.
Where we are installing over an existing system we will ask for the commissioning records and the operating parameters. Where we are refinishing a floor that has suffered from a badly run system, we will tell you that the finish is the symptom rather than the problem.
Markings are the part of a floor everybody looks at, and the part most often got wrong.
We set out from current governing body dimensions using laser and tape, not by copying what is already on the floor. Courts that have been remarked by tracing the previous set drift over the years, and a surprising number of halls turn out to have netball thirds that are not equal or three point arcs that are not true.
On timber the lines go down between coats of seal so the paint finishes under the final lacquer. That single detail is why our markings last as long as the finish, while lines applied on top of a completed floor start lifting within a season.
We will also ask what is actually played. Most halls carry markings for at least one sport nobody has taught in years, and removing redundant sets does more for clarity than any amount of clever colour choice. Fewer lines, correctly dimensioned, in colours that separate properly under your own lighting.
The greenest sports floor is almost always the one already in the building, and that is worth saying plainly when so many are replaced unnecessarily.
A timber sports floor that is refinished rather than replaced avoids the manufacture and transport of an entire new floor, and it avoids sending the existing one to landfill. Given that a well built sprung floor can be refinished five or six times across its life, the difference over thirty years is substantial.
The coatings have improved too. Modern water based two pack systems have far lower solvent content than the finishes used twenty years ago, which matters for the people applying them and for the building afterwards. Low emission systems are available where a specification calls for them, and we will discuss the trade offs honestly, because the toughest finishes are not always the lowest emission ones.
Where a floor genuinely has to be replaced, timber remains a renewable material and the old boards can often be recovered rather than skipped.
Dundee work comes to us mainly from university and college sport, the council leisure estate and secondary school facilities.
University sport is a substantial part of it. Campus facilities are busy year round, with summer conference and external hire filling what would be a shutdown elsewhere, so the working windows are narrow, fixed and non negotiable. We plan those jobs well ahead and staff them to finish inside the window.
Leisure and community sports centres come next. Booking income makes a long closure expensive, so most of that work is done overnight, with the floor sealed at the end of a shift and walkable by opening time.
School sports halls follow the fixed term calendar, and the hall has to be back for the first day whatever else happens.
Because we travel to reach the area, these projects are planned as continuous blocks with everything brought with us rather than collected locally. It also means that sequencing two or three jobs into one trip is worth doing, and it brings the cost down for all of them. If you know of another facility considering work, it is worth mentioning.
The enquiries we take from Dundee tend to fall into three groups.
University and college facilities usually come to us with an even wear pattern across a heavily used hall, where the question is timing rather than diagnosis. Those floors want catching before the seal goes through, which keeps them on a screen and recoat cycle rather than a full sand.
Leisure centre halls more often arrive with a specific complaint, most commonly that the floor has become slippery. The cause is nearly always polish build up or a seal worn smooth in the busiest routes, and both are straightforward to correct once identified.
School halls tend to present with markings rather than surfaces. Courts remarked repeatedly by copying the previous set drift over time, and a hall that has been done several times that way can be measurably out. We set out from measured governing body dimensions, which often turns out to be the first time in decades.
Colour is the part of a relining scheme most often decided badly, because it gets chosen from a chart in an office rather than on the floor under the hall lights.
Most halls have been refitted with LED lighting in the last decade, and LEDs render colour very differently from the fluorescent tubes they replaced. Two shades that look clearly distinct on a sample card can merge almost completely under the actual lighting, which is how halls end up with court markings nobody can follow.
So we bring samples and look at them in the room with the lights on before anything is ordered. It takes ten minutes and it prevents the most common complaint we hear about other contractors work.
The floor itself matters too. A pale maple floor takes different colours from a mid tone vinyl or a dark polyurethane, and a scheme designed for one will not necessarily read on the other. Where a hall is being recoloured as well as relined, the two decisions have to be made together rather than in sequence.
There is no standard rate, because no two floors arrive in the same condition. What we can promise is that we will identify the cheapest option that genuinely solves the problem and quote it alongside the fuller alternatives, with firm figures rather than ranges.
Yes, throughout. Distance is a logistics question rather than a quality one, and we resolve it by planning the whole programme in advance rather than working in stages.
Usually, provided the source is fixed first. Damaged boards are cut out and replaced with matching timber before the floor is sanded and sealed as one surface, so the repair disappears into the finish.
Protective covering laid over the playing surface takes the punishment from desk and chair legs and lifts quickly afterwards. It costs far less than repairing the damage.
Regularly. Original timber is restored rather than replaced wherever it is sound, interventions stay sympathetic, and we can advise on what conservation officers typically accept.
Surface marks and worn lacquer come out easily. Deep water staining and anything soaked into open timber may remain faintly visible, and we will tell you honestly at survey what to expect.
It can if it is run too hot or brought up too quickly, which dries the boards and opens gaps. The system needs proper commissioning and controlled surface temperatures, and the timber needs to be specified as suitable.
Yes. We deep clean, reseal, remark and fully recoat synthetic sports surfaces, and a PU floor recoated in a fresh colour with new markings looks like a new installation for a fraction of the cost.
Yes, and for organisations with several floors it is where we usually start. You get a written report per site with photographs, moisture readings, remaining wear layer and a costed priority order.
Heating dries the air, the boards give up moisture and shrink. It is normal seasonal movement rather than a fault, and it closes again in summer. Keeping the building humidity more stable reduces it.
Dust mop daily to lift grit, damp mop with a neutral cleaner made for sealed sports timber, and never use polish, wax or anything promising shine. We hand over written guidance with every job.
Book a free survey of your floor in Dundee and we will tell you honestly what it needs, what it will cost and how quickly it can happen. Call 01823 674562 or send us a message.