Best Flooring for Flats and Apartments
Part E figures, the lease, and why the underlay decides: how to choose a hard floor for a flat without the neighbour below hearing every step.
In a flat the floor is shared. Every step, chair leg and dropped key travels through the structure to the ceiling below, and a hard covering carries that sound further than the carpet it replaces. Choosing a floor for a flat is therefore a sound decision before it is a style decision, and it turns on two things that have nothing to do with colour: what the building already does, and what the underlay adds.
On this page
Two things to settle before the floor is chosen
What the numbers mean
Approved Document E sets two figures for a separating floor. Airborne sound insulation, written DnT,w + Ctr, is a minimum: the higher, the less of the television downstairs you hear. Impact sound insulation, written L'nT,w, is a maximum: the lower, the less of your footsteps they hear. For purpose-built flats the floor must reach 45 dB airborne and stay at or below 62 dB impact; for flats formed by a material change of use, a converted house for instance, the figures are 43 dB and 64 dB.
L'nT,w is the weighted standardised impact sound pressure level. It condenses a measurement across the frequency bands into one number using the rating method of EN ISO 717-2, and it is measured in the finished building, not in a laboratory. In a new-build block that measurement is part of the construction: pre-completion testing on site, or a design detail approved by Robust Details Ltd in place of the test. Either way, the floor was tested with whatever covering the developer specified. What you lay on top afterwards was not part of that test.
The underlay is the decision
A floor covering can only make the impact sound better or worse than the bare structure, and the amount is measured. The impact sound improvement of a covering is the weighted reduction in impact sound pressure level it achieves over a bare reference floor, calculated from laboratory measurements made to ISO 10140-3 and rated to ISO 717-2. So a figure on a datasheet is a reduction measured in a laboratory over a standard floor, not a promise about your ceiling. It is useful for comparing two products; it is not a guarantee.
For underlays under laminate, EN 16354 sets the test methods, impact sound among them, and the EPLF's technical bulletin says the ISLam value should be at least 14 dB, tested with the reference floor covering the standard describes. Any higher figure on a datasheet is that manufacturer's own declaration for that product. The practical rule follows from this: ask for the figure, ask which standard it was tested to, and treat it as a comparison between products rather than a number your neighbour will hear.
Room by room in a flat
What to ask before ordering
Whether the lease needs consent, and from whom. What the separating floor is made of, because a concrete slab and a timber joist floor in a converted house behave differently under the same covering. The underlay's impact figure and the standard it was tested to. Whether the covering floats, so that the underlay is actually in the build-up. And the total build-up, because doors and thresholds in a flat are the first thing the new floor meets.
Common questions
Can I put wood flooring in a flat?
Usually, with two conditions. The lease may require consent for a hard floor, so read it first. And the floor should be floated over an acoustic underlay with a stated impact figure, because a glued board has no underlay layer and carries footfall straight into the structure.
What does the impact figure on an underlay mean?
It is the reduction in impact sound the covering achieved over a bare reference floor in a laboratory, measured to ISO 10140-3 and rated to ISO 717-2. It compares products; it does not predict what a particular neighbour will hear, because that depends on the structure the floor sits on.
Does a thicker underlay mean a quieter floor?
Not on its own. The figure that is measured is the impact sound reduction, and thickness is not that figure. The EPLF's minimum for an underlay under laminate is an ISLam value of at least 14 dB; a thin dense underlay can reach it and a thick soft one can miss it.
Do the Part E figures apply to a new floor covering?
They apply to the separating floor as it was built and tested. Changing the covering does not change that test, but it changes what is heard, which is why the covering and the underlay are chosen together in a flat. Where the work goes into the floor structure itself, the building control body is the place to ask.
Flats are a larger share of the housing in some of the towns we deliver to than in others, and the age of the block says a lot about the floor beneath the floor. Browse by town and region.
What the published standards say
Who publishes this guide
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