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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Stirling and across the UK. We work with university, school and community facilities, planning each project as a complete visit.
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
The build-up beneath the surface decides how a floor behaves. A cradle system suspends the floor on resilient pads for high shock absorption. A sports batten construction is the reliable all-rounder. Pad and board suits restricted heights. A duo batten system doubles up for greater resilience across the area.
Each produces a measurably different feel, and the right one depends on the sports played and the level of play rather than on price alone.
Available height frequently dictates what is possible. Door thresholds, existing levels, fixed equipment and access all limit the depth a new floor can occupy, and simply laying something thinner sacrifices the compliance that protects users.
Low-profile sprung and point-elastic systems resolve this properly, delivering genuine performance within a shallower construction. We measure at survey rather than discovering the constraint on installation day.
Basketball wants consistent ball rebound and a forgiving landing. Badminton wants dependable friction for lunging. Netball generates severe one-footed landings. Dance wants controlled slide. Each pulls the specification in a slightly different direction.
Where a hall hosts all of them, the job is to find the specification that serves the primary sport well and the others acceptably, and to be explicit about which is which.
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
A new finish is only as good as the regime that follows it, and the fastest way to waste the money is to put the wrong mop on it in week one.
The guidance we hand over is deliberately short. Dust mop daily with a treated cloth to lift grit before it acts as an abrasive underfoot. Damp mop with a neutral cleaner made for sealed sports timber. Deal with spills quickly. Keep a decent mat run at the entrances, because most of the grit that wears a floor walks in on trainers.
What to avoid is equally short. No polish, no wax, nothing that promises shine. These build up, reduce slip resistance and eventually have to be stripped chemically at real cost. They are the most common cause of the slippery floors we are called out to.
Scrubber driers are fine if they are set up correctly and the water is picked up rather than left standing. We are happy to look at your machine settings while we are on site.
Commercial and public buildings need documentation, and providing it in advance rather than on request is part of what distinguishes a specialist contractor.
Before the work you receive method statements and risk assessments specific to the job rather than a generic template, COSHH data sheets for every product we will bring on site, and copies of our public liability and employers liability insurance.
For school sites we provide DBS details for the staff attending, and we work to whatever additional safeguarding arrangements the school or trust requires. Our teams are used to signing in, wearing identification and staying within agreed areas.
On main contractor sites we work to site rules, attend inductions and provide progress reporting in whatever format the contract requires.
At handover you get the product data sheets, the cure times in writing, aftercare guidance and, where requested, the pendulum slip resistance certificate. It goes into the facilities file as a complete record rather than a folder of assurances.
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.
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.
Stirling brings us university sport, council leisure facilities, secondary school halls and a number of club and community buildings.
University and college facilities are busy across the full year, with summer conference and external hire filling what would be a shutdown elsewhere. The working windows are narrow and fixed, so those projects are planned months ahead and staffed to finish inside them rather than stretched across a longer period.
Leisure centres follow, where booking income makes long closures expensive and most of the work is carried out overnight, with the floor sealed at the end of a shift so it is walkable by opening time.
School 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, projects here are planned as continuous blocks with everything brought with us rather than collected locally. Sequencing two or three jobs into one trip brings the cost down for all of them.
Two projects answer most of what Stirling facilities ask about.
Aston University is the closest for campus sport. The hall was heavily booked, the finish had worn through in the traffic lanes, and there was no genuine summer shutdown because conference and external hire filled it. We surveyed early, ordered materials ahead, staffed the job to the window and handed the floor back on the agreed date with markings set out fresh from measured dimensions.
Medina Leisure Centre is the better comparison for council and operator run halls, where booking income made a long closure impossible. The work was sequenced around the centre timetable, with the noisiest operations falling when the building was quietest and sealed dust extraction keeping the surrounding areas usable.
Both were routine technically. The value in each was in the survey and the programming, which is what allows a fixed price and a date that holds.
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.
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.
Yes. Boards are matched by species and grade so repairs blend into the finish rather than announcing themselves. It is one of the reasons we do repairs in-house.
A failed resilient layer or a batten that has lost contact beneath that area. It is a structural problem, so resurfacing will not fix it. We locate and repair the build-up underneath.
Yes. Our survey reports rank work by urgency so you can spread it across financial years, and we will say honestly what cannot safely wait.
Yes. Scheduled deep cleaning, screen and recoat visits, minor repairs, remarking and an annual written condition inspection. It is considerably cheaper than reacting when a floor has already failed.
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. 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.
Yes. Logos are painted from your own artwork between coats of seal so they wear with the floor rather than scuffing off. It costs least while the floor is already open for a refinish.
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.
Book a free survey of your floor in Stirling 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.