Calculator
Floor screed cost per m², built up properly
The record
- Checked by
- Carl Winson
- Built from
- CIJC Working Rule Agreement
- Wage date
- 20 July 2026
- Grades
- craft rate and general operative
The working
- 2 × tradesperson at £16.40
- £32.80
- Gang wage, per hour
- £32.80
- + 35% on top of wages
- £44.28
- × 8 hours on the tools
- £354.24 a day
- Traditional sand and cementlaid to level on a prepared base£354.24 ÷ 150 m² × 1.20 = £2.83/m²
Benchmark
£2.83/m² labour
CIJC rates · tradesperson £16.40/hr · gang of 2 · 35% on top · overheads and profit 20%
Materials, scaffold and supervision are not included in this rate.
What’s in this?
- Employer's National Insurance - 15% above £5,000 a year
- Holiday pay - 12.07%
- Pension, auto-enrolment minimum - 3%
- CITB levy - 0.35% of payroll
- Sick pay, training and employer's liability insurance - the remainder
- At 0% this is a CIS subcontractor's labour price - National Insurance, holiday and pension are then theirs to carry, not the job's.
The location range is authored, not measured - our tender data says what was bought where, not what labour costs there.
Price a whole job with this ratePut in the job size and your lump sums - scaffold, plant, skip, and get the job total.
The minimum starts at a day of the gang, priced - £425.09 - because travel, unloading and setting up make a day the honest floor. Type your own, or 0 for none.
Put a job size in and the total appears here.
The cheapest rate on this site, and the one that stops a job
At 150 m² a day for two, screed prices lower per square metre than anything else here - a few pounds a metre in labour. It is genuinely quick work: barrow or pump it in, rule it off to the datum, close the surface, move on.
Then it has to dry, and that is where screed costs money. Not in the laying, in the waiting, and the waiting is on the programme, not the rate. Anyone who has priced a floor finish behind a screed and been caught by the moisture reading knows the number that matters here is not £/m².
The drying rule, and why it decides your programme
The industry rule of thumb for traditional sand and cement is 1mm a day for the first 50mm, then about two days per millimetre beyond that. So a 50mm screed is roughly fifty days; a 75mm screed is not fifty per cent longer, it is around a hundred days.
That is a rule of thumb rather than a promise - BS 8204 and the Screeding Contractors Association are both clear that it depends on the mix, the thickness, the surface and the conditions in the building. What actually governs is the reading: under BS 8203, most floor coverings need 75% relative humidity or below on a hygrometer test, and no amount of programme pressure changes what the meter says.
Price the laying from this calculator. Plan the programme from the depth, and tell the client the drying time before you start rather than when the flooring contractor is standing in the hall.
What changes the day
- Getting the material in. Pumped straight to the floor is what makes 150 m² possible. Barrowing through a house, up a stair or round a corner can halve it, and mixing on site rather than taking it ready-mixed halves it again.
- Underfloor heating. Pipes clipped down before the pour means working around them and keeping depth over them. It is slower and the depth is not negotiable.
- Room shape. Big open floors are fast. A house full of small rooms with door thresholds is setting out and closing off, over and over.
- Levels and datum. Getting the datum right is time before anything is laid, and the one thing you cannot fix afterwards without taking it up.
Liquid screed is a different job entirely
Flowing anhydrite or liquid cement screeds are pumped and self-levelling, and outputs run into the hundreds or thousands of square metres a day - a different trade with different plant, different depths and different drying behaviour, usually with a laitance to remove before a floor finish goes down.
This card prices traditional sand and cement, laid to level and closed by hand. If you are pricing liquid screed, the output slider will not stretch far enough to be honest about it - that is a separate card rather than a bigger number on this one.
Questions people ask
How long does sand and cement screed take to dry?
The industry rule of thumb is 1mm a day for the first 50mm, then roughly two days for each additional millimetre, so 50mm takes about 50 days and 75mm nearer 100. It is indicative rather than exact, and what governs in practice is a hygrometer reading: most floor coverings need 75% relative humidity or below before they can be laid.
How much screed can two people lay in a day?
Around 150 m² a day for a two-person gang laying traditional sand and cement to level on a prepared base, assuming the material can be pumped or barrowed easily to the floor. Difficult access, mixing on site, underfloor heating pipes and lots of small rooms all pull it down.
Why is screed labour so cheap per square metre?
Because the output is very high - 150 m² a day against 25 for plastering or 16 for brickwork. The labour genuinely is a small part of a screeding job. The cost that matters on a screed is programme: the drying time before a floor finish can go down.
Can you speed up screed drying?
Some, with heat and ventilation or a force-drying regime, but not as much as most programmes assume, and drying a screed too aggressively risks curling and cracking. The honest approach is to plan the drying time into the programme from the depth at the outset and take hygrometer readings rather than guessing.
Is liquid screed priced the same way?
No. Flowing anhydrite and liquid cement screeds are pumped and self-levelling, with outputs in the hundreds or thousands of square metres a day, different plant, different depths and different drying behaviour. This calculator prices traditional sand and cement laid and closed by hand.
Where these figures come from
The wages are the national minimums agreed between employers and unions, republished each July. The costs on top of them are the statutory ones every employer actually pays. The outputs - how much a gang gets through in a day - are blended from published estimating guidance, and they are the part worth arguing with, which is why every one is a control you can move.
Other trades
- Bricklaying£35.68/m²
- Blockwork£23.84/m²
- Plastering£8.50/m²
- Rendering£38.34/m²
- Concreting£7.92/m²
- Tiling£17.71/m²
- Roofing£32.80/m²
- Block paving£25.56/m²
- Tarmac driveways£15.34/m²
- Resin driveways£16.61/m²
- Painting£14.17/m²
- Stud walls£17.71/m²
- Patios£31.95/m²
- Repointing£26.57/m²
- Plasterboarding£12.39/m²
- Decking£31.88/m²
- Fencing£25.56/m²
- Turfing£3.42/m²
- Coving£7.08/m²
- Loft insulation£4.27/m²
- External wall insulation£38.34/m²
- Soft strip£8.54/m²
- Hand excavation£85.41/m²
- Shuttering£8.50/m²
- Mesh and rebar£2.56/m²
Pricing a job like these?
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