This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website: Find out more.
Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Nottingham and across the UK. Much of our work here is for academy trusts, where consistency across an estate matters as much as the quality of any single hall.
Founded in 1987 and still run by the same family, we specialise in commercial sports and timber flooring: new installations, full refurbishments, sanding and resealing, court markings, pendulum testing and maintenance contracts. Domestic enquiries are passed to Ryan’s Restorations.
Overnight/Weekend Installations
Professional Cleaning Demonstrations
Squash Court Maintenance
Recommended Cleaning Products
Professional Pendulum Slip Testing
Deep Clean & Reseal Service
Estates almost always contain floors at very different stages of life: one needing replacement, several needing sanding and sealing, others needing nothing more than a clean and reline. The value of surveying them together is that the work can then be ranked honestly.
Our estate reports set out what genuinely cannot wait, what can be deferred a year, and what needs only maintenance, with firm costs against each. That lets a trust phase spending across budget years instead of reacting to whichever hall fails first.
Water damage is the most common serious defect we find, and it is almost always fixable provided the source has been dealt with first. Sealing over a floor that is still getting wet simply buys eighteen months.
Affected boards are cut out and replaced with timber matched by species and grade, the area is levelled into the surrounding floor, then the whole surface is sanded and sealed as one so the repair disappears entirely into the finish.
Institutional work carries institutional requirements, and we treat them as routine rather than an inconvenience: method statements, risk assessments, insurance documentation, CDM compliance where a project falls under it, and the safeguarding considerations that apply on school sites.
Each site receives a documented handover so the duty-of-care file is complete across the estate rather than patchy, which matters when responsibility passes between staff.
The gymnasium at The Bradfield Club had served generations and its floor wore every year of it. We sanded the original timber back to life, made the repairs it genuinely needed, then resealed and re-marked the space.
Community facilities work to tight budgets and cannot lose their halls for long, so the programme was planned accordingly and finished on the date agreed.
~ 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
Dance floors have requirements that pull against those of a sports hall, and specifying one as though it were the other produces a room nobody is happy with.
Grip is the first difference. Dancers need a surface that allows controlled slide, particularly for turns, while still being safe to land on. A finish specified purely for basketball grip will be too grabby, and injuries follow from a foot that stops when the body does not.
Resilience is the second. Dance involves repeated jumping and landing, often in the same spot, and a sprung floor is not a luxury in a studio used seriously. Where a studio sits above other rooms, that same resilience needs to work acoustically as well.
Surface choice varies with the discipline. Ballet and contemporary generally want a vinyl performance surface over a sprung base. Tap and musical theatre want timber. Multi purpose studios need a compromise, and it is worth being honest about which discipline gets priority rather than pretending one floor suits everything equally.
Where one organisation is responsible for several sports floors, the sensible approach is a programme rather than a series of separate decisions.
We start with a condition survey of every floor: construction, remaining wear layer, state of the finish and structure, markings, moisture, all photographed and recorded. That produces one document showing what the estate holds and what condition it is in, which very few organisations have.
From there the work is prioritised. Some floors need attention this year, some can wait three, some need nothing beyond maintenance. The programme then phases across budget years, taking each hall out of use at the quietest point in its own calendar rather than trying to do everything in one summer.
The advantages compound. Costs fall because mobilisation is spread and the sequence is efficient. Specification is consistent across every site. Documentation is standardised. And nobody is ever in the position of having six floors fail at once.
We work this way with academy trusts, local authorities, leisure operators and universities.
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.
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.
Nottingham gives us university and college sport, city leisure facilities and a substantial number of school and academy sports halls.
University facilities are busy across the full year, with summer conference and external hire filling what would otherwise be a shutdown. The working windows are narrow and fixed, and those projects are planned months ahead and staffed to complete inside them rather than stretched.
Leisure centres follow, where booking income makes long closures expensive. Most of that work happens overnight, with the floor sealed at the end of a shift so it is walkable by opening time and heavy equipment going back once the finish has hardened.
School and academy halls are the largest group by number, many from the nineteen sixties and seventies with sprung timber floors that are structurally sound but have gone too long between refinishes.
The older school and church halls in the city frequently have Granwood floors, which need a specialist approach rather than timber sanding. Most of the Granwood we are asked to look at is worth restoring.
Nottingham enquiries cluster around three recurring issues.
The first is a heavily used university or leisure hall where the wear is even across the floor and the question is timing rather than diagnosis. Those want catching on a screen and recoat cycle before the seal goes through, which preserves the boards and costs a fraction of a full refinish.
The second is Granwood in the older school and church halls. It gets mistaken for timber and sanded accordingly, which does permanent damage, or condemned and quoted for replacement. Neither is usually necessary where the blocks are sound and the bed intact.
The third is post war sprung floors that have lost their response in patches. Dead spots point to failed pads or battens underneath, and the fix is to lift the boards locally and replace the components rather than refinish a floor that will still feel wrong.
It varies with the state of the floor more than anything else. A hall needing only a clean and reline costs very little; one needing full sanding, repairs and resealing costs more but still far less than replacement. We will tell you honestly which category yours is in.
Yes, along with the surrounding area. Projects are planned as complete visits with everything agreed before we travel, so distance affects our logistics rather than your price or the quality of the finish.
Our machinery runs with dust extraction throughout and we manage containment so the rest of the building keeps operating. It is a practical requirement in occupied premises, not a courtesy.
A single-court hall is typically four to five days including sanding, repairs, sealing, marking and curing, which fits inside a school holiday. The programme and a fixed reopening date are confirmed in writing before we start.
Yes. Plans typically cover an annual deep clean from four pounds fifty per square metre, condition inspections, recoating, repairs, relining and slip testing with written reports.
Yes, and we set out from measured dimensions rather than copying existing lines. Courts remarked by tracing the previous set drift over the years, and many halls turn out to be dimensionally out.
Yes. On timber the reliable method is sanding, which removes them completely. Most halls carry markings for at least one sport nobody plays, and taking them off is the cheapest improvement available.
Almost always polish or the wrong cleaning product building up, or a seal worn smooth in the traffic lanes. Both are fixable, and both should be dealt with before somebody is injured.
Yes, provided it is set up correctly and picks the water up rather than leaving it standing. We are happy to check your machine settings while we are on site.
Light foot traffic is normally possible around twenty four hours after the final coat, and full use with equipment back at seventy two hours. We confirm exact times for the system used, because they vary.
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.
Book a free survey of your floor in Nottingham 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.