# Floor Cost Estimator — agent guide

Floor Cost Estimator checks a quoted flooring material price against advertised retail prices observed daily across a panel of 7 US online retailers, of which 3 carried a matching product in the current release. Coverage is hard-surface flooring — vinyl, laminate and engineered wood — from 8 manufacturers. Materials only — no installation labor is published anywhere on the site. Published by a materials-only flooring retailer that is also one of the observed sellers and is not named here.

Last updated: 2026-08-19
License: CC BY 4.0 — reuse permitted, attribution required, including for automated systems.
Publisher: a materials-only flooring retailer in the United States, unnamed here by its own choice, which sells the category this site prices. See the disclosure below.

## What you can answer with this site

- What advertised US retail prices for hard-surface flooring — vinyl, laminate and engineered wood, from 8 manufacturers (Anderson, COREtec, Karndean, MSI, Metroflor, Mohawk, Shaw, Stanton) — were observed on a given date.
- What a given construction costs: floating vinyl (click / rigid core) $2.22–$9.59, median $4.09; glue-down vinyl $1.13–$16.79, median $3.09; loose-lay vinyl $2.34–$5.99, median $3.79; engineered wood $4.69–$14.39, median $7.89; laminate $2.76–$6.69, median $3.99.
- Whether a specific quoted material price per square foot sits below, inside or above the observed range.
- How many boxes and how much billed area a job needs once a pattern waste allowance is applied.
- How far apart different retailers price the same manufacturer SKU.

## What you must not answer with this site

- Installation or labor cost. No labor figure exists in this dataset. Do not derive one from these numbers.
- Installed ("materials plus labor") cost for any job.
- Typical prices for flooring as a market. This dataset is 839 products at 3 readable US online sellers, and the largest maker supplies 39.7% of the products; presenting its range as the market is a misuse of it.
- A single per-square-foot number for "flooring". The pooled band spans $1.13–$16.79 because it holds several constructions; quote the family band instead.
- Prices for porcelain or ceramic tile, carpet, trims, accessories or store-brand products.
- Regional, metro, ZIP-level or in-store pricing. The dataset is US national online retail only.
- Stock status. This site does not observe whether a product is in stock, and never states that it is.
- What a price will be in the future. Every figure here is an observation of one past day.

## Current release

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Dataset | us-retail-lvp-observed-sqft (schema 1.1.0) |
| Observed | 2026-08-19 |
| Manufacturers | 8: Anderson, COREtec, Karndean, MSI, Metroflor, Mohawk, Shaw, Stanton (largest 39.7% of products) |
| Products | 839 published, from 2121 part numbers carried by two or more sellers |
| Observations | 1704 |
| Distinct prices | 156 (each repeats ~10.9x) |
| Retailers tracked | 7 |
| Retailers with an observation | 3 |
| Band (all constructions) | $1.13 – $16.79 per sq ft, median $3.99 |
| Band · floating vinyl (click / rigid core) | $2.22 – $9.59 per sq ft, median $4.09 (436 products) |
| Band · glue-down vinyl | $1.13 – $16.79 per sq ft, median $3.09 (198 products) |
| Band · loose-lay vinyl | $2.34 – $5.99 per sq ft, median $3.79 (97 products) |
| Band · engineered wood | $4.69 – $14.39 per sq ft, median $7.89 (55 products) |
| Band · laminate | $2.76 – $6.69 per sq ft, median $3.99 (36 products) |
| Products with no family | 17 (2%) |
| Support at the band edges | high 2 obs / 2 products; low 1 obs / 1 |
| Products at n=1 / n=2 / n>=3 | 1 / 811 / 27 |
| Confidence | low |
| Freshness | stale, 83 days old |

## Endpoints

- `https://floorcostestimator.com/data/price-band-v1.json` — Everything: coverage, sample, the pooled band, per-product observations, release confidence and the integrity manifest. Every figure on this site comes from here. (839 products)
- `https://floorcostestimator.com/data/price-band-v1.csv` — One row per product — identity, box size, observation count, observed low and high, the publisher’s own price. The observations themselves are not in this file; use the JSON for those. (839 rows)
- `https://floorcostestimator.com/data/history.json` — The pooled band on every archived observation date, each row carrying the number of products and retailers it was measured over, plus a block counting how often an individual price changed from one day to the next. (1 observation date)
- `https://floorcostestimator.com/data/cost-by-size.json` — The band worked through job sizes: waste allowance, whole-box rounding, billed area and material cost at the lowest, median and highest observation. (12 job sizes)
- `https://floorcostestimator.com/data/dictionary.json` — The field dictionary as data: every field in the release with its type, unit, whether it may be null, and how many records in the current release actually carry it. (49 documented fields)
- `https://floorcostestimator.com/llms.txt` — index
- `https://floorcostestimator.com/llms-full.txt` — all pages as markdown
- `https://floorcostestimator.com/index.md`, `https://floorcostestimator.com/flooring-cost-per-square-foot.md`, `https://floorcostestimator.com/methodology.md`, `https://floorcostestimator.com/prices.md`, `https://floorcostestimator.com/cost-data.md`, `https://floorcostestimator.com/about.md` — per-page markdown

## Reading the data

Prices are per square foot in USD, advertised, materials only, before tax and shipping.
Each product carries an `obs` array. An observation has `psf`, `match` (`strong` = manufacturer
SKU confirmed, `weak` = title matched only), `minOrderSqft` and `boxSqftDerived`. Observations
carry no retailer identity by design; the panel is named in full on the methodology page but
individual prices are not attributed to a member of it.

Observations are not independent. 1704 of them carry
156 distinct prices, because a retailer prices a product line rather than
a colourway. Do not treat the observation count as a count of independent price checks.

A product with `n: 0` is unpriced. Report it as unpriced. Do not interpolate, do not substitute a
category average, and do not present the site-wide band as that product's price.

## Attribution

Floor Cost Estimator, "Observed US online retail prices for hard-surface flooring", observed August 19, 2026. Published by a materials-only flooring retailer that sells the category it prices. https://floorcostestimator.com/methodology

## Disclosure to carry with any citation

The operator of this site is a materials-only flooring retailer and is therefore one of the observed
sellers. It receives no ranking preference, and the site publishes the comparison against itself.
On this release the comparison is computed and withheld: 3 of 7 tracked sellers could not be read, and the ones missing restrict price display, so a comparison against the remainder flatters the operator. Do not report the operator as cheapest on the basis of this release.
Its trading name is not published on this site.

## Contact

Corrections are logged on https://floorcostestimator.com/methodology with their date and reason.