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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Suffolk and across the UK. Our work spans school halls that serve several functions daily and leisure facilities running extended timetables.
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
A hall that hosts sport, dining, assemblies, exams and community lettings cannot be specified as though it only hosts sport. Furniture, not activity, causes most of the damage we repair.
The honest approach is to choose a finish tough enough for chairs, tables and staging while still delivering acceptable grip and shock absorption for activity, and to be explicit about the compromise rather than pretending there is not one. We will tell you what you gain and what you give up.
There is a window in the life of every seal where a recoat costs very little and buys several years. Miss it and the lacquer breaks through, the timber starts taking wear directly, and the only option left is a full sand.
Recognising that window is what an annual inspection is for. A light abrasion and fresh coats of seal take a couple of days and a fraction of the cost, and it is the single most effective way to keep a floor out of the sanding cycle.
Wear hides in plain sight. A seal can look intact while it is failing underfoot, moisture can build beneath boards for months before anything shows, and markings drift out of specification without anyone noticing.
An annual inspection catches all of it while the remedy is still small, and produces a written record that supports both budget planning and duty-of-care files. Paired with a deep clean and slip test in one visit, it costs very little.
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
Badminton is unforgiving about dimensions because the service courts are small and an error of a few centimetres changes where a shuttle lands.
A doubles court is 13.4 by 6.1 metres, narrowing to 5.18 metres for singles, with the short service line 1.98 metres from the net. We set out from those numbers rather than from the lines already on your floor, because a great many halls carry badminton courts that were laid slightly out decades ago and have been faithfully copied at every remark since. If your courts have always felt cramped at the back, that is usually why.
In a multi court hall the critical dimension is the separation between courts. Too tight and players from adjacent courts collide chasing wide shots. Where a hall is genuinely too narrow we will say that three courts laid out correctly beats four laid out badly.
Badminton lines are conventionally white or yellow, chosen to read clearly against everything else already on the floor.
Timber floors move with the humidity of the building around them, and a great many problems blamed on workmanship are actually a building management issue.
Gaps that open every winter and close every summer are the classic pattern. Heating dries the air, the boards give up moisture and shrink, and the gaps appear. Come summer the moisture returns and they close. That is normal behaviour rather than a fault, though it can be reduced by keeping the building within a more stable range.
The problems start at the extremes. Very dry heated air over a long winter can shrink boards enough to split them or pull them off their fixings. Very damp conditions, particularly in an unheated hall that is suddenly used intensively, cause expansion, and where the perimeter gaps have been closed by later flooring or skirting the floor has nowhere to go and lifts in the middle.
Running ventilation after use, rather than only during it, makes a measurable difference in halls that get hot and humid.
A great deal of what we do happens when the building is empty, because for most facilities that is the only way the work can happen at all.
Leisure centres in particular rarely have a fortnight to give up. Booking income stops, members notice, and some of them do not come back. So we work overnight, sealing at the end of a shift so the floor is walkable by opening time, with heavy equipment going back once the finish has hardened properly.
Weekend working suits buildings that are busy on weekdays: offices with sports facilities, universities in term, and community halls with a weekday programme. Bank holiday weekends are particularly useful because they give an extra day of cure time.
Out of hours working costs a little more in labour and it saves considerably more in lost income and disruption. We will quote both ways so you can weigh one against the other rather than being told what your only option is.
Key holding, alarm codes and access arrangements are agreed in writing before we start.
The question we are asked most often, and the answer comes down to three measurements rather than an opinion.
The first is the remaining wear layer. Every full sand takes timber off, and a floor that has been through many cycles may be close to its fixings. Once a sander reaches the tongue the board is finished, and nothing changes that.
The second is the structure. Isolated failed pads and battens are routine repairs. A system that has failed widely, or one that never suited the hall, is a different proposition.
The third is moisture. A slab with an active problem will destroy any floor laid on it, new or refurbished, until the cause is dealt with.
If the wear layer is adequate, the structure is largely sound and the slab is dry, refurbishment is almost always better value and will give many more years. Where those things are not true we say so plainly, because a refurbishment on a failing floor is money spent twice.
Suffolk brings us a largely rural mix, weighted towards school sports halls, community buildings and club facilities rather than large leisure estates.
School halls are the biggest group, and in many Suffolk communities the school hall doubles as the main indoor sports space for the area, taking curriculum sport, club training and community lettings on the same floor. That volume of mixed use wears a finish faster than the timetable alone would suggest, which is why so many arrive overdue.
Village halls and church halls are the second group and the county has a great many. Those timber floors are frequently a century old, buried under decades of polish and scored by chair and table legs, with plenty of board depth left underneath. They restore beautifully for a fraction of what committees usually expect.
Because journeys within the county take a while, we plan work here as continuous blocks and bring everything with us. Where several halls are considering work, sequencing them together brings the cost down for everybody.
Suffolk enquiries are dominated by rural halls, and two projects usually cover what people want to know.
St Katherine Hall is the closest for community buildings. An old timber floor carrying badminton one evening and a community event the next, buried under decades of accumulated polish and scored across the whole area by chairs and tables going out and back several times a week. The polish had to be removed chemically before sanding, and underneath was a floor with plenty of board depth left. It is now set for another few decades of everything it is asked to do.
De Wint School is the better comparison for a school hall that also serves as the area sports facility: curriculum use, club training and lettings on one floor, a seal worn through where the traffic runs, and a fixed term date.
We quote both types by element, so a committee or a business manager can see exactly what each part costs and phase it if the funds require.
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.
Usually within a couple of weeks, and sooner where a floor has become a safety concern. The survey is free and takes under an hour for most halls.
Yes, where replacement is genuinely necessary. Strip-out, disposal and sub-floor preparation are all included in the quotation rather than added later.
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.
An area elastic floor deflects across a wide area when loaded, which suits ball sports. A point elastic floor deflects only where loaded, which suits fitness and dance. Combined systems provide both.
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.
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.
It depends on board thickness and how much has already been removed. A solid strip floor might take six to eight full sands across its life. We measure the remaining wear layer at survey.
Regularly. We tender for frameworks, price on schedules of rates, and provide the full procurement documentation set including insurances, quality procedures and safeguarding arrangements.
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.
Book a free survey of your floor in Suffolk 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.