What flooring should go in a laundry?
Timber works in a laundry, and we supply plenty of them. The room gets treated like a bathroom because it has plumbing in it, but it hasn’t got the thing that actually damages a timber floor, which is a shower running twice a day.
The laundry is the room people ask about last and worry about most. It sits in the Building Code alongside the bathroom, which makes it sound like a hard no, and then in practice it behaves like a kitchen.
We sell timber floors, and we’ll tell you where tile is the better call.
The short answer, surface by surface
Five surfaces get put in laundries. Two of them we would talk you out of.
| Surface | Our verdict | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Engineered timber | Yes | What we would choose if you want one floor running through the house with no threshold strip at the laundry door. The cross-laminated core restrains movement across the width, which is why engineered rather than solid is the starting point anywhere near water. |
| Tile or porcelain | Yes | The most forgiving surface and the one the Code’s Acceptable Solution route is built around. Impervious, works over a membrane, and it does not care how long water sits on it. If the laundry is a separate room and you do not mind the floor changing at the door, this is the easy answer. |
| Vinyl plank | Yes | Copes with water better than it looks, because it responds to temperature rather than humidity. Worth a look if you want the timber look at a lower spend and the room is on its own. |
| Laminate | No | Its fibreboard core expands in both directions and swells for good once it is wet. A laundry is exactly where that gets found out. |
| Carpet | No | Holds moisture against the floor and never fully dries in a room with a machine in it. |
Whichever you pick, a laundry counts as a wet area under the Building Code, so a timber floor there is an Alternative Solution rather than an off-the-list choice. That is a design and consent question, covered further down.
A laundry isn’t a bathroom, and the reason is the shower
Timber moves with the air around it. It takes up moisture from humid air and gives it back to dry air until it settles at whatever level the room sets.
The numbers are the useful part. At 20°C and 60% relative humidity a floor sits near 11% moisture content. Push the same room to 80% and it heads toward 16%. Every 3% change in moisture content moves a board roughly 1% across its width.
A bathroom does that twice a day. A shower drives the humidity up fast, the room holds it, the boards swell, then the room dries out and they shrink back. Do that for a year and the board edges lift above the centre. That cycle, not the odd splash, is what damages a timber floor in a bathroom.
A laundry has no shower, so it never runs that cycle. The water in there lives inside the machine and the tub, and a tub gets used the way a kitchen sink does. That is why we put a laundry with the kitchen rather than with the bathroom, even though the Code files them together.
One thing worth doing: if the dryer is a vented one, duct it outside rather than into the room. A dryer venting into a closed laundry is the only thing in there that can hold the humidity up for hours, which is the bathroom problem imported.
The appliance question, answered honestly
A burst hose is the objection people raise, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a brochure one.
It is a real risk. A supply hose that lets go while you are at work will flood the room, and no timber floor recovers well from standing water. Our warranty excludes flooding and plumbing failures, and it excludes them wherever in the house they happen.
What it is not is a reason to rule out a laundry specifically. A kitchen carries the same risk and usually more of it: a dishwasher, a fridge plumbed for ice and water, and a sink that can be left running are three chances against the laundry’s two. Nobody argues against a timber kitchen floor on those grounds, and the logic does not change one room over.
Treat it as the plumbing question it is. It is cheap to answer.
Braided steel hoses
Rubber supply hoses perish. Braided steel ones cost very little and are the single highest-value thing on this page.
A tray under the machine
A drip tray turns a slow leak, which is the common failure, into something you notice before the floor does.
Turn the tap off
If the house is empty for a while, shut the laundry taps. A hose only bursts under pressure.
What the Code asks for in a laundry
Timber is not banned in a New Zealand laundry. What changed is narrower than that, and it is worth understanding before you talk to a builder.
Clause E3 of the Building Code covers internal moisture. MBIE describes the rooms it applies to as
“spaces that contain sanitary fixtures or appliances, including laundries, bathrooms, kitchens and toilets.”
A washing machine and a tub put a laundry inside that description on their own. The Code then asks that the floor surface of such a space is impervious and easily cleaned, impervious meaning it does not allow the passage of moisture.
In November 2020, Amendment 7 to the Acceptable Solution took timber off the list of accepted floor finishes for those spaces, and the previous version stopped having effect on 3 November 2021. So a timber floor in a laundry is now an Alternative Solution: your designer and building consent authority assess it case by case on evidence, instead of ticking it off a pre-approved list. Legal, but it has to be specified and signed off, and your BCA is who has to be convinced.
How much of the floor this covers depends on the shape of the room rather than its name. An enclosed laundry is treated as a whole room, the way a bathroom is. A laundry nook off an open-plan space is treated the way a kitchen is, with the impervious surface asked for within 1.5 metres of the fixtures. We have written up the detail of how that works on the E3 side separately.
One distinction saves a lot of confusion. The Code asks two separate things: that the surface you walk on is impervious and easily cleaned, and that water does not reach the structure behind and below. A floor covering only ever answers the first. Waterproofing is the membrane underneath, never the floor itself.
How to spec a timber floor in a laundry
None of this is exotic. It is the same detailing a good installer uses in a kitchen, applied to a smaller room with more plumbing in it.
Engineered, not solid
A solid board is one piece of timber and moves as one piece. An engineered board has a timber wear layer over a cross-laminated core, and that cross-lamination restrains movement across the width. It is the right construction anywhere near water. Note that wear-layer thickness governs how many times a floor can be sanded back, not how it handles moisture.
Glue it down
A glued floor moves less than a floating one and gives you a flatter, quieter result in a small room. The adhesive is not a moisture barrier and is not sold as one, so it is a stability decision rather than a waterproofing one.
Seal the perimeter and the penetrations
Use a water-resistant adhesive and a flexible perimeter sealant within about 1.5 metres of the tub and the machine, to manage surface moisture at the floor junction. The wet-area detailing and the E3 call belong to the project’s designer or BCA, and our installation documentation supports that detailing rather than replacing it.
Size the expansion gaps
Per the ATFA engineered flooring standard, 10mm per edge suits a normal interior and up to 14mm a humid room with a big swing. Leave it around the full perimeter and every fixed object: the tub plinth, the machine bay, the door jamb. Fix skirting to the wall rather than to the floor.
Test the substrate first
Measure the moisture in the slab and pick the primer off that reading, not off the calendar.
Plan the machine bay
Decide before the floor goes down whether the machine sits on the timber or on a tiled bay. Both work. Deciding afterwards is what leaves you with a visible join in the wrong place.
What most people end up doing
The version that works most often is timber through the living areas, hallways, bedrooms, kitchen and laundry, and tile in the bathrooms. One floor everywhere it belongs, and the wet room is the wet room.
If the laundry is a separate room at the back of the house and the floor already changes at its door, tile in there costs you nothing in the look and buys you a surface that does not care. That is a fair call and we will say so.
What the warranty says about it
We have two warranty documents and they answer different questions.
The product warranty is written around conditions rather than rooms, and it does not name a room anywhere. It asks that indoor relative humidity stays between 40% and 65%, that floor surface temperature stays below 27°C, and that the floor is protected from standing water, flooding or excessive wet mopping. A normal laundry holds those conditions without anyone trying, which is exactly what a bathroom struggles to do.
The installation warranty is the one that names rooms, and the room it names is the bathroom. Laundries and kitchens are not named in it.
The one thing neither document covers, in any room in the house, is flooding or a plumbing failure. Which is the whole reason the hoses and the tray are worth the small money.
None of this affects your rights under the Consumer Guarantees Act. Our warranty operates in addition to those rights, not instead of them.
Common questions
Can you put timber flooring in a laundry in New Zealand?
Yes. There is no law against it, and we supply laundries regularly. A laundry counts as a wet area under the Building Code, so a timber floor goes in as an Alternative Solution that your designer and building consent authority sign off case by case, rather than off the pre-approved list. Legal, but it has to be specified properly.
Is a laundry a wet area under the Building Code?
Yes. MBIE describes wet areas as spaces that contain sanitary fixtures or appliances, and names laundries alongside bathrooms, kitchens and toilets. A washing machine and a tub are enough on their own, so the room is in whether or not water ever reaches the floor.
What is the best flooring for a laundry?
It depends what you want from the room. Tile or porcelain is the most forgiving surface and the one the Acceptable Solution route is built around. Timber is what we would choose if you want one floor running through the house without a threshold strip at the laundry door. Vinyl plank sits in between and copes with water better than it looks. Laminate is the one to avoid, because its fibreboard core swells for good once it gets wet.
Will a washing machine leak ruin a timber floor?
A burst supply hose that runs while you are out will damage any floor, and it is excluded from our warranty the same way it would be in a hallway. It is worth guarding against, and the fix is plumbing rather than flooring: braided steel hoses, a tray under the machine, and turn the tap off if you go away for a while. Worth knowing that a kitchen carries the same risk from its dishwasher, and nobody rules out a timber kitchen floor over it.
Can you run the same floor from the hallway into the laundry?
That is usually the reason people ask. Yes, and it is the main argument for timber here: one continuous floor with no threshold strip at the door. The detailing changes at the wet fixtures rather than the flooring, so it is worth having your installer plan the perimeter and the machine bay before the floor goes down.
See it in your own light
If the laundry is one room in a bigger job, that is the conversation worth having. Tell us about your place and we will give you a straight answer on what suits which room.
Samples are free, and they are the fastest way to see how a floor looks at home.
