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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Edinburgh and across the UK. Projects here are planned as complete visits, and a good share involve spaces serving both sport and performance from a single floor.
We are specialists rather than generalists, which after nearly forty years means a depth of knowledge on sports and commercial timber floors that a general contractor cannot match. Every stage is completed in-house. We do not quote for domestic work; Ryan’s Restorations handles that side.
Overnight/Weekend Installations
Professional Cleaning Demonstrations
Squash Court Maintenance
Recommended Cleaning Products
Professional Pendulum Slip Testing
Deep Clean & Reseal Service
Halls asked to host both sport and performance present a genuine specification conflict. Sport wants grip and true ball response; dance wants controlled slide and generous shock absorption. A floor optimised for one compromises the other.
The workable answer is usually a sprung construction with a surface chosen to sit deliberately between the two, accepting a small compromise on each rather than a large one on either. We will explain exactly where that compromise falls before you commit.
Performance surfaces lose consistency before they look worn. Dancers notice patches of differing slide long before anyone spots a problem visually, and inconsistency is what causes falls.
Refinishing restores an even surface across the whole area, whether that means sanding and resealing a timber floor or deep cleaning and, where the system allows, treating a vinyl performance layer. We assess what you have before recommending either.
Academic calendars, performance seasons and event bookings all constrain when a floor can be closed, and those constraints rarely align. The programme therefore has to be built backwards from your calendar.
We work vacations, quiet weeks, overnight shifts and weekends, and phase larger projects so part of the space stays usable. The schedule and the reopening date are fixed in writing before anything starts.
The sports hall floor at De Wint School had reached the end of its seal: grey through the middle, markings closer to guesswork than instruction, and a surface that felt slippery however often it was cleaned.
We sanded it back to clean timber, repaired what needed repairing, resealed and re-marked. The hall reopened with a deep, glossy finish that reads as newly installed, delivered inside a planned holiday window.
~ 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
Gym floors fail differently from every other floor in a building, because the damage is point loading rather than even wear.
Dropped dumbbells, plate loaded machines dragged rather than lifted, benches shuffled across boards and racks bolted down and later moved all leave dents and gouges. Sanding removes a surface but a deep dent stays a dent, and part of our survey is telling you which marks will come out and which will not.
Chalk and sweat are the other half. Both soak into timber wherever the seal has worn through, and chalk in open grain can leave a permanent grey cast in the lifting area.
Rubber matting laid straight onto a sealed floor and left down for years traps moisture and can bond to the lacquer, so lifting it takes the finish with it. It is one of the main reasons gym floors arrive in worse condition than the sports hall next door.
The answer is usually a harder finish, an extra coat in the free weight zone, and a proper lifting platform where the weights actually land.
Not every tired floor needs taking back to bare timber, and knowing the difference saves facilities a great deal of money.
A screen and recoat is a light abrasion of the existing finish followed by a fresh top coat. It restores grip and appearance, it takes a fraction of the time, and it costs a fraction of the price. It works when the seal is worn but still intact across the floor.
A full sand removes everything back to bare timber and rebuilds the finish from scratch. It is the right answer when the lacquer has worn through in the traffic lanes and dirt is sitting in open grain, when there are repairs to make, or when the markings need setting out fresh.
As a rule of thumb, a well maintained hall wants a screen and recoat every two to three years and a full sand roughly every ten. Sticking to that keeps the boards alive far longer, because every full sand removes timber you cannot replace. A floor refinished every three years will run out of wear layer decades early.
Slip resistance is the one performance characteristic of a sports floor that can be measured objectively, and it is worth having the number rather than an assurance.
The pendulum test is the recognised method in the United Kingdom. A weighted arm with a rubber slider swings across the surface and the resistance is recorded, giving a pendulum test value. Sports surfaces are expected to sit within a defined range: too low and players slip, too high and the shoe binds, which brings its own injury risk.
We carry out testing on floors we have worked on and on floors we have not, and we provide the certificate. It is worth having in three situations in particular. After a refinish, so you can demonstrate the floor was handed over correctly. Where a floor has been reported as slippery, so you know whether it genuinely is. And where an insurer, a governing body or a facilities audit has asked for evidence.
Where a test comes back low, the cause is usually polish build up or a worn seal, and both are fixable.
Almost every hall we work in has a stage, and it is usually in worse condition than the hall floor because of what gets dragged across it.
Stages are often a different construction and a different timber from the room they sit in, sometimes with a hollow void beneath for resonance. That changes how they are sanded and what they can take, and it is worth knowing before a machine goes on.
The finish is a different decision too. A matt or dead matt seal kills the reflections that stage lighting otherwise produces, and it hides the scuffing that scenery and staging leave. Some venues want a stage that can be painted for productions, which changes the specification again and needs discussing at the outset rather than afterwards.
We generally recommend doing the stage at the same time as the hall. It costs considerably less than two separate visits, it gives a consistent appearance, and the stage is usually the part that most needs it.
Edinburgh gives us a strong weighting towards university and independent school sport, alongside the city leisure estate.
University facilities are busy across the full year, and the summer is filled with conferences, festival related use and external hire rather than standing empty. That makes the working window narrow and fixed, and it is why these projects are planned months ahead and staffed to finish inside it rather than stretched.
Independent school sports halls, gymnasia and squash courts are the second strand. Expectations of finish quality are high, the work goes into fixed holiday windows, and a good proportion of it is preventative screen and recoat rather than full refinishing, which is the cheapest way to run a floor.
Council leisure centres and community sports facilities follow, where booking income means most work happens overnight or across an agreed quiet period.
Squash courts feature more here than in many cities, and they need a matt high grip specification rather than a general sports lacquer. A court polished smooth through the middle is a genuine injury risk, not merely an inconvenience.
Edinburgh enquiries cluster around a few recurring issues, and squash features more prominently here than in most cities.
Slippery squash courts are a regular call. The constant return to the T polishes the finish smooth through the centre while the front and back still look fine, and it is a genuine injury risk rather than a comfort complaint. A matt high grip reseal restores it properly.
The second is independent school halls where the finish is dulling rather than genuinely worn. Those want a screen and recoat, not a full sand, and saying so honestly preserves the boards for future cycles.
The third is university facilities working to very narrow windows. The technical work there is routine; the difficulty is programming, and it is solved by surveying early, ordering materials in advance and staffing the job to finish inside the window rather than hoping it stretches.
Repainting is usually understood as relining only, but on synthetic floors we can change the appearance of the entire hall, and it is one of the highest impact things a facility can do on a modest budget.
A polyurethane or modified epoxy floor that has gone patchy, faded or simply dated can be recoated in a new base colour, with fresh court markings applied over the new coating. The hall goes from looking worn out to looking refurbished without touching the substrate underneath, and the relining is carried out as part of the same programme rather than as a separate visit.
Colour choice is worth proper thought. Darker bases show dust and scuffing quickly and can make a hall feel smaller. Mid tone greys, blues and greens hide marks, sit well under LED lighting and let the line colours read clearly against them.
Where a school or club wants its identity on the floor, this is the moment. Coloured keys, a contrasting centre circle or a crest at centre court all go down alongside the relining rather than as a separate job later, which is considerably cheaper than coming back for them.
The honest answer is that we cannot know until we have measured. What we can say is that we price the least expensive effective option as well as the full one, so the decision is yours rather than ours, and that the figure we give you is the figure you pay.
We do, and the wider region with it. Work further from our base is organised as a single concentrated programme so nothing is left unfinished awaiting a return trip, and travel is included in the quoted price.
We can give indicative guidance from photographs and hall dimensions, which is often enough to plan a budget. A firm fixed price needs a site survey, which is free.
Solid and engineered timber from Junckers, Boen and Havwoods, plus vinyl, polyurethane and lino, and specialist coating systems for Granwood and composite block floors.
Usually cleaning residue rather than a worn seal. Over-strength product or the wrong pH leaves a film that reduces grip. A deep clean normally restores it, and a slip test confirms it objectively.
A failed pad, cracked batten or tired cradle beneath the boards. It is a structural problem, and sanding the surface will not change how the floor feels. We lift the boards locally and replace the failed components.
A typical hall takes one to two weeks from first machine to final coat, depending on size, how much board repair is needed and how many coats the seal requires. You get a day by day programme before we start.
Yes, and for multi site clients it usually should be. We build rolling programmes that spread the spend and take each hall out of use at the quietest point in its own calendar.
Yes. We survey the slab for level and moisture first, install mitigation where readings require it, and specify the system to the actual timetable of the hall rather than to a standard answer.
Yes, routinely. A great deal of our leisure centre and university work is done overnight so the facility keeps trading. It costs a little more in labour and usually saves a great deal more in lost income.
A light abrasion of the existing finish followed by a fresh top coat. It restores grip and appearance at a fraction of the cost of a full sand, and it works whenever the seal is worn but still intact.
Book a free survey of your floor in Edinburgh 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.