$3-$10 per sq ft installed Power-stretched, not kicked Pad specified on the quote Toronto and the GTA

Carpet installation in Toronto

Carpet fails in year two because of how it was stretched, so Toronto Flooring Co quotes the stretch, the pad and the waste factor as separate lines instead of hiding them in one number per square foot.

Power stretcher on every room wider than a hallway

Pad density matched to the traffic, not to the leftover roll

Waste factor of 10 to 20 percent stated before you sign

Old carpet lifted, rolled and hauled out the same day

Get your carpet quote

Rooms, approximate square footage and whether there are stairs. That is enough to start.

What can we help with?

Service

So the right crew reviews your project.

Any workmanship warranty is set out in your written quote, job by job.

Installation method

Knee-kickers, power stretchers and carpet tension

A knee-kicker is a positioning tool. It nudges carpet onto the tack strip a few inches at a time using the installer’s body weight, and it cannot put real tension across a twelve-foot room. A power stretcher braces against the opposite wall and pulls the carpet tight across its full width before it is hooked down. Carpet that was only kicked sits on the strip without tension, and once the backing relaxes through a heating season the slack has nowhere to go but up. That is the ripple you see across a hallway in the second winter, and it is not a defect in the carpet. Restretching later means moving the furniture again, lifting the carpet off the strip and redoing the work you already paid for. We stretch it once, properly, and we will tell you which rooms need a seam and where the seam will land before the roll is cut.

What a carpet quote covers

Power stretching across the width

Tack strip set to the right gap from the wall, carpet pulled with a power stretcher rather than positioned with a kicker, then trimmed and tucked. Seams placed away from doorways and away from the main sightline, because a seam in a traffic path is the first thing to open.

Pad specified by name

The pad is half of how the floor feels and most of how long the carpet lasts. A thick, soft pad under a low-pile carpet in a hallway shortens the life of both. We put the pad on the quote so you can see what you are buying under the part you can see.

The measure includes the waste

Carpet comes off a roll of fixed width, so the room dictates the offcut. Waste runs 10 to 20 percent on carpet, more when the room is wide or the pattern has to match. We show the roll plan and the waste number rather than quoting a tidy figure and invoicing the real one.

Carpet pricing in Toronto

Toronto and GTA ranges collected September 2026. Material choice moves the number more than labour does, so check which fibre a competing quote priced before you compare totals.

Labour only

$0.50-$3 / sq ft

You supply carpet and pad
Tack strip, stretch, seams and trim
Stairs quoted separately as handwork
Subfloor prep priced on what we find

Price labour only

Supplied and installed

$3-$10 / sq ft

Carpet, pad and labour together
Olefin $1-$3 and polyester $2-$5 per sq ft in material
Nylon $3-$8, acrylic $3-$7, wool $10-$20 per sq ft in material
Waste factor of 10 to 20 percent included in the measure

Get a written quote

Added to most jobs

$1-$3 / sq ft

Old carpet removal and disposal $1-$3 per sq ft
Furniture moving $25-$75 per room
Subfloor repair $1-$4 per sq ft where boards move
Transitions and thresholds $200-$600 across a project

Ask what yours needs

Our Process

How a carpet job runs

1

Measure and roll plan

Room dimensions, doorway widths and where the roll seams have to fall. You see the waste percentage and the seam locations before anything is ordered.

2

Clear and lift

Furniture moved at $25 to $75 per room if you want us to do it, old carpet and pad lifted and rolled, staples and old tack strip pulled, floor swept clean.

3

Deck check and prep

Loose subfloor boards refastened to the joists and soft spots flagged. Carpet hides a moving floor rather than fixing it, so anything that moves gets dealt with now.

4

Strip, pad, stretch

New tack strip, pad stapled and butted, then carpet power-stretched wall to wall, seamed, trimmed and tucked. Doorway transitions fitted last.

Things we say before the carpet is ordered

Carpet is the one floor where the cheap version and the good version look identical in the showroom. These are the differences we point out first.

Which fibre suits the room you are carpeting

Olefin at $1 to $3 per square foot in material is the budget fibre and it does not recover from crushing in a traffic lane. Nylon at $3 to $8 does. If you are carpeting a stair and hall run and looking at olefin to save money, we will say plainly that you are buying the same job twice.

Where the seam has to go

A roll has a fixed width, so a room wider than the roll gets a seam whether anybody likes it or not. We tell you where it lands and why, and we place it out of the main light and out of the doorway rather than putting it where the offcut is most convenient.

What is under the old carpet

We do not know until it is up. In a pre-1945 Toronto house we expect a board subfloor and we watch for knob-and-tube wiring in the joist bays, which was used in homes from the early 1900s to the 1940s. If it appears we stop and bring in a licensed electrician rather than laying pad over it.

Whether carpet belongs on that slab at all

On a basement or condo slab the moisture in the concrete decides. Published guidance puts carpet at 85 percent or less on an ASTM F2170 in-situ relative humidity test and 5 or less on an ASTM F1869 calcium chloride test, with the manufacturer's own spec overriding both. Carpet tolerates more slab moisture than wood does, which is not the same as tolerating any.

Four carpet fibres and what they cost

Carpet fibre is the single decision that sets both the price and the lifespan, and the four common ones behave differently enough that the choice should be made room by room.

Olefin sits at roughly $1 to $3 per square foot in material. It resists moisture and bleach cleaning, which is why it turns up in basements, and it does not recover from crushing, which is why it looks tired in a hallway inside two years. Polyester runs $2 to $5, takes colour beautifully and shrugs off stains, and it flattens under repeated footfall sooner than nylon. Nylon at $3 to $8 is the fibre that springs back, and it is the sensible answer for stairs, halls and family rooms. Acrylic sits at $3 to $7 and reads like wool at a distance. Wool at $10 to $20 is the one everybody likes touching and the one that prices itself out of high-traffic areas.

Those are material numbers, not installed numbers. Supplied and installed, carpet runs $3 to $10 per square foot across Toronto and the GTA, and where your job lands inside that range is mostly a fibre question.

The pad under your new carpet

The pad does the work nobody sees. Every footstep compresses the carpet backing against whatever is underneath, and the pad is what absorbs that instead of the backing.

Two mistakes are common. The first is reusing the old pad because it looks fine. It is not fine. It has already taken years of compression in exactly the places the new carpet will be walked on, and it is where the old odours live. The second is choosing pad by thickness alone. A thick soft pad under a plush bedroom carpet is right. The same pad under a low-pile runner in a hall lets the carpet flex too far with each step and grinds the backing apart from below.

We specify pad by density and thickness on the quote. If another quote says only carpet and installation, ask what pad is in it, because that is where a low number usually comes from.

Roll width, carpet waste and moving furniture

Carpet arrives on a roll of fixed width, so the shape of your rooms decides how much of that roll ends up in a bin.

Waste on carpet runs 10 to 20 percent, higher than the 5 to 15 percent typical of plank flooring, because you cannot cut a roll the way you cut a board. A run of rooms off one hallway can often be planned to share a roll direction and keep waste near the bottom of that band. An L-shaped living room with a wide opening and a pattern to match can push it to the top. Pile direction matters too: carpet laid with the pile running different ways in adjoining rooms reads as two different colours under the same light, so the plan has to keep direction consistent even when that costs offcut.

We give you the waste percentage in the quote. A quote that reports only the finished floor area has either absorbed the waste into a higher rate or is going to ask for more material partway through the job.

Furniture moving is priced per room at $25 to $75, and it is quoted as its own line so you can choose.

Plenty of clients clear the small stuff themselves and leave us the beds, the sectional and the piano. That is usually the cheapest sensible split. What we ask is that the decision is made before the crew arrives, because a room that has to be cleared on the morning of the install is an hour of three people’s time that nobody budgeted. Closets count, and the contents of closets count. Electronics are worth unplugging and photographing yourself.

Carpet goes down over whatever the subfloor is doing. If a board is loose it will still be loose under the new carpet, and you will hear it. We refasten anything that moves to the joists while the floor is open, because that half hour is only available once.

Carpet installation questions

Why does my carpet ripple after a year?

Almost always because it was kicked onto the tack strip instead of power-stretched across the room. A knee-kicker moves carpet a few inches at a time and cannot put tension across a full room width. The carpet sits on the strip with slack still in it, the backing relaxes through a dry heating season, and the slack surfaces as a ripple or a wave in the traffic lane. The fix is a restretch, which means clearing the room again and lifting the carpet off the strip. Doing it right the first time costs nothing extra in material.

Which carpet fibre holds up to a hallway?

Nylon, and the material price reflects it at roughly $3 to $8 per square foot against olefin at $1 to $3. Nylon recovers its shape after being crushed, which is the property a traffic lane tests every day. Polyester at $2 to $5 holds colour well and resists stains but flattens sooner under constant footfall. Wool at $10 to $20 performs well and prices itself into bedrooms rather than halls. We match the fibre to the room instead of carpeting a whole house in one grade.

What does the pad cost me?

Less than replacing carpet early. The pad carries the load and takes the compression that would otherwise crush the carpet backing, so the pad is the part that decides how long the visible part lasts. The mistake we see most often is a thick soft pad under a low-pile carpet in a hallway, which lets the carpet flex too much and wears the backing out from underneath. We specify the pad on the quote by name and thickness so you can compare it against other quotes rather than guessing.

Do you take the old carpet away?

Yes, and it is a line on the quote rather than a favour. Carpet, laminate and vinyl removal with disposal runs $1 to $3 per square foot in Toronto. The old pad, staples and tack strip come up with it, because new carpet stretched over old brittle strip does not hold. If you are in a condo, many boards require debris to leave the building the same day, so we book the elevator and the loading dock for the removal as well as the delivery.