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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in London and across the UK. Our work here is dominated by buildings that never stop: facilities running from six in the morning to eleven at night, where a floor closure is a revenue decision rather than an inconvenience.
A family business established in 1987, working exclusively on commercial indoor sports and timber floors. We survey, install, restore, mark, test and maintain, keeping every stage in our own hands so one warranty covers the whole system. Domestic work is handled separately by Ryan’s Restorations.
Overnight/Weekend Installations
Professional Cleaning Demonstrations
Squash Court Maintenance
Recommended Cleaning Products
Professional Pendulum Slip Testing
Deep Clean & Reseal Service
A floor used sixteen hours a day ages differently from one used six. Wear concentrates in predictable places, seals break down faster, and the maintenance interval that suits a village hall is meaningless in a facility running back-to-back sessions.
We specify against actual usage hours rather than building type. That usually means a harder-wearing seal system, a build-up chosen for durability as much as performance, and a maintenance schedule set to the real timetable rather than an annual default. It costs slightly more at installation and considerably less across the life of the floor.
Getting machinery and materials into a first-floor sports hall in a constrained building is a genuine part of the job, and it is where inexperienced contractors lose days. Lift dimensions, stair access, delivery windows, parking restrictions and out-of-hours building access all have to be established before a programme is agreed rather than discovered on the first morning.
We survey all of it up front. It is unglamorous, and it is the main reason our programmes tend to hold when others slip.
Multi-storey and converted buildings frequently cannot accommodate a conventional sprung build-up. Doors, thresholds, existing levels and structural loading all limit what can go down, and simply laying a thinner floor sacrifices the shock absorption that protects users.
Low-profile sprung and point-elastic systems solve this properly, delivering genuine compliance within a much shallower construction. We measure the available height at survey and specify accordingly, rather than discovering the problem when the doors will not close.
At Medina Leisure Centre we refurbished the main sports hall floor completely: sanding, repairs, resealing and a full set of new markings, with the logistics planned down to the last detail so the centre lost as little bookable time as possible.
The after photographs show a hall transformed, and the programme finished on the date agreed at the outset.
~ 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
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.
Squash courts are small rooms with a very particular wear pattern, and they need their own specification rather than being treated as miniature sports halls.
The traffic concentrates at the T, where players return after every shot, so a court can look fine at the front and back while the centre has been polished smooth. That polished band is both unpleasant to play on and a genuine injury risk.
The finish is the critical decision. World Squash guidance calls for a light coloured, matt floor with high slip resistance, and a gloss finish on a squash court plays like ice once the first film of dust settles. We sand to the correct degree of openness and use matt high grip systems, because sanding too fine polishes the timber before the seal even goes on.
Court markings are red, 50 millimetres wide, and applied between coats so they survive. Because each court is a separate room we can work through a block one or two at a time, keeping the rest of the club playable.
Timber remains the benchmark for indoor sports flooring, and the reason is simple: it performs well, it can be refinished repeatedly rather than replaced, and players prefer it.
The systems divide by what sits beneath the boards. A sprung floor uses resilient pads, foam blocks or engineered cradles under battens, producing an area elastic response that spreads load when a player lands. A semi sprung system uses a shallower build up. A floor fixed directly to the slab has no give at all and is hard on joints where sport is played regularly.
Above that, the playing surface is solid strip or engineered board. Maple is the traditional choice for its hardness and pale colour, with beech and oak also common. Solid strip has a generous wear layer and will take many refinishes. Engineered board has a thinner layer over a stable core, so there is less margin.
The detail that governs longevity is the perimeter. Timber moves with humidity, and a floor without a proper expansion gap and ventilated skirting will lift in the middle. It is skipped surprisingly often.
University sports facilities have a particular problem: they are busy year round, so the long summer shutdown that schools rely on does not exist.
Term brings curriculum use, club training and league fixtures. The summer brings conferences, summer schools and external hire, which is often more lucrative than term time use. The window for work is therefore narrow, defined and non negotiable.
The way we handle it is by planning to the window rather than hoping to fit inside it. We survey early, order materials in advance, staff the job properly rather than spreading a team across sites, and build the cure times into the programme rather than treating them as slack.
Campus estates usually hold several floors of different ages: a main sports hall, studios, squash courts and a fitness suite, often built decades apart. A condition survey across all of them, with a phased programme, is generally far more useful than dealing with each as it becomes urgent.
London gives us the widest range of building types anywhere we work, and the practical challenges are as much about access as about the floors themselves.
Independent schools, academy trusts, universities, leisure operators and private clubs all feature. The building stock runs from Victorian school halls with original timber to modern purpose built sports centres, and the specification varies accordingly.
Access is the recurring constraint. Sports halls in tight urban sites often have no vehicle access to the door, restricted delivery windows, controlled parking and limited storage for materials and displaced equipment. We survey the access route before quoting so that the programme reflects reality rather than an assumption, because getting large sanding machinery into a first floor hall in a constrained site is a genuine planning exercise.
Out of hours working is more common here than anywhere. Many facilities simply cannot close during the day, so evening, overnight and weekend programmes are the norm rather than the exception.
We have worked at The Bradfield Club among others, and access planning was as significant as the flooring specification.
The Bradfield Club is the project we point to most often for London enquiries, because access was as significant as the flooring itself.
Urban sites frequently have no vehicle access to the door, restricted delivery windows, controlled parking and nowhere to store materials or displaced equipment. Getting large sanding machinery into a hall in those conditions is a genuine planning exercise, and we survey the access route before quoting so the programme reflects what is actually possible rather than an assumption made from a floor plan.
The floor itself was the familiar story: an old timber hall floor with plenty of depth left under decades of accumulated finish, restored rather than replaced at a fraction of the cost.
For campus facilities the closer comparison is Aston University, where the constraint was a year round timetable with no real summer shutdown, and for operator run buildings it is Medina Leisure Centre, where booking income ruled out any long closure.
Relining is the natural moment to add the things that make a hall look like yours rather than institutional, because the setting out is being done anyway.
A school crest or club badge at centre court is one of the few changes that genuinely lifts a room for a modest cost. It is painted from your own artwork between coats of seal, so it sits under the final lacquer and wears at the same rate as the floor around it. Anything applied over a finished floor scuffs and peels within a season, whatever the supplier claims.
Colouring the key or a zone works the same way and has the same effect. A filled key in a contrasting colour makes a court read instantly and looks designed rather than accidental.
We scale the artwork properly to the circle or area it is going into and show you a layout before anything goes down, with colours matched to your own brand rather than approximated from a chart.
Cost is driven by area, condition and specification. Because we do not subcontract, there is no margin stacked on top of another contractor’s price, which is one reason our quotations tend to compare well. Everything is itemised so you can see exactly what you are paying for.
Yes, and we regularly work considerably further afield. Our quotations include travel and mobilisation openly rather than adding them later, so the figure you see is the figure you pay.
No. Courtship Flooring is a commercial contractor working on large-scale sports and institutional floors. Private homes are handled by our sister company Ryan’s Restorations.
None of it. The team that surveys the hall carries out every stage through to the final coat and returns for maintenance, which means one warranty covering the whole system.
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.
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.
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.
A well maintained hall wants a light 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 permanently.
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.
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.
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.
Book a free survey of your floor in London 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.