Nobody calls a flooring company because they want to talk about money. But it’s the first thing everyone is thinking about, and most flooring websites dodge it with a cheerful “it depends!” So let’s not do that.
Below are the ranges we actually see across the towns J&J Flooring covers — Cherry Hill, Mount Laurel, Moorestown, Glassboro, Woodbury, Sicklerville, Medford, and the rest of South Jersey. Your house will land somewhere inside these numbers. An in-home measure is the only way to know exactly where, but you should be able to sanity-check any quote you get against this page.
Installed price ranges in South Jersey right now
| Flooring type | Typical installed cost | What moves the number |
|---|---|---|
| Carpet with new pad | $4 – $8 per sq ft | Fiber type and pad density |
| Luxury vinyl plank | $5 – $12 per sq ft | Wear layer thickness and core type |
| Hardwood refinishing | $3.50 – $6 per sq ft | Stain color changes and floor condition |
| Carpet on stairs | $40 – $100 per step | Box steps cost more than straight runs |
| Vinyl on stairs | $80 – $150 per step | Every stair nose is cut and finished by hand |
“Installed” means material plus labor. It does not automatically include tearing out what’s already down, repairing the subfloor underneath it, or hauling your old carpet to the curb. That gap is exactly where two quotes on the same house start to drift apart.
The line items homeowners forget
- Demolition and disposal, roughly $1 to $3 per square foot. Pulling one layer of carpet is quick. Pulling three layers of sheet vinyl off a 1940s Woodbury rowhome is a different day entirely.
- Subfloor prep and leveling, roughly $1 to $4 per square foot where it’s needed. Rigid core vinyl telegraphs every dip in the floor beneath it. Self-leveling compound isn’t an upsell on a wavy subfloor — it’s the difference between planks that stay locked and planks that separate by spring.
- Transitions, thresholds, and quarter round, roughly $3 to $12 per linear foot. Small number, lots of linear feet.
- Furniture and appliances. Ask who is moving the sectional, the piano, and the washer and dryer. Some crews include it, some charge, some expect an empty room.
- Undercutting door jambs and trimming doors, $15 to $40 per opening. A new floor that’s a half inch taller means the bedroom door doesn’t swing.
- Asbestos. Nine-by-nine tiles in a home built before 1980 — and there are plenty of those in Camden and Burlington counties — need to be tested, not scraped. Never sand or break old tile to “see what’s under there.”
- Waste factor. Budget 7 to 10 percent extra material on a standard layout, and up to 15 percent for diagonal installs or herringbone.
Two quotes on the same house, three thousand dollars apart
This happens constantly, and it’s almost never because one contractor is gouging you. It’s because the two quotes cover different work. One assumes the subfloor is perfect. The other budgeted to fix it.
To compare fairly, ask every contractor for the same six things in writing: the exact product name and its wear layer or face weight, the pad specification, whether demo and disposal are included, what the subfloor prep allowance is, whether transitions and trim are in the price, and who moves the furniture. When all six are on paper, the cheap quote usually stops looking cheap.
Ask every contractor what happens if they pull up the old floor and find a problem underneath. A vague answer means a change order later, after your house is already torn apart. We tell you the allowance up front and we show you the subfloor before we cover it back up.
What real South Jersey projects look like
- A 1970s split-level in Cherry Hill, about 900 square feet of main-floor luxury vinyl over a sound plywood subfloor, old carpet removed and hauled: roughly $7,000 to $10,000.
- Three bedrooms and a hallway in Mount Laurel, about 700 square feet of mid-grade nylon carpet with new eight-pound pad: roughly $3,500 to $5,500.
- A basement family room in Sicklerville, about 600 square feet of rigid core vinyl over concrete with a dimpled subfloor panel underneath: roughly $5,500 to $8,500.
These are ballparks, not quotes. A house with stairs, a lot of closets, or a subfloor that needs leveling lands higher. A wide-open room with a flat, clean subfloor lands lower.
Where you can save without regretting it
- Buy the better pad before you buy the taller pile. Pad is what keeps carpet from crushing flat in the traffic lanes, and it’s one of the cheapest upgrades on the whole quote.
- With vinyl, spend on wear layer rather than total plank thickness. A thick plank with a thin wear layer scratches just as fast as a thin one.
- Do the connected rooms at once. You pay setup labor once instead of twice, and you avoid dye lot mismatches between this year’s carpet and next year’s.
- Refinish instead of replace when the boards have life left. If you’ve got three-quarter-inch solid oak — common in Haddonfield, Collingswood, Moorestown, and the older Mount Holly homes — sanding and refinishing is usually thousands less than tearing it out.
- Keep the footprint. Moving a wall or a cabinet run turns a flooring job into a renovation.
About financing
For qualified customers there are promotional options including 0% APR, which matters if you’re trying to do the whole first floor at once instead of a room a year. Doing it all at once is genuinely cheaper per square foot. We’ll walk you through what you qualify for without making it the centerpiece of the conversation.
Every J&J Flooring estimate is free, done in your home, and itemized — removal, prep, material, installation, and cleanup all broken out so you can see what you’re paying for. Call (609) 300-0509 or request a free in-home estimate and we’ll bring samples to your living room.