Karndean Flooring Lifting – Anyone Else Had This?

jfh · 08-10-2025 02:27PM #1

Looking for some advice or shared experiences.

We had Karndean flooring installed recently in a few rooms, and I'm noticing it's lifting slightly along the edges near the external walls, especially under the skirting boards. The flooring was laid first, and then the skirting boards were installed tight down on top, so there’s no visible expansion gap.
The foundation of the house was down almost 12 months so it cant be settling.

I'm wondering:

Has anyone else had issues with Karndean lifting or buckling?

Any success getting an installer/retailer to come back and fix this?

Our retailer is refusing to help as he says it our issue, even though he has admitted that his regular fitter guy was on holidays when ours was laid..

Thanks in advance!

tenbob1 · 08-10-2025 04:01PM

Wow.

Sounds like a issue with bad floor preparation prior to installation. Did they use a smoothing compound ? A few pictures might help.

jfh · 08-10-2025 05:22PM

All along outside wall

tenbob1 · 09-10-2025 05:07PM

Look to me like a more serious issue than the Karndean flooring to be honest here. You need to get an engineer out to investigate here what has happened. Looks like you have a failure in the sub-floor.

Feets · 09-10-2025 05:11PM

Bought karndean twice in five years. No issue. Looks like an installation issue. Sorry

tabby aspreme · 11-10-2025 10:17PM

Is it a floating click floor or fixed with adhesive

mickdw · 11-10-2025 10:28PM

I've a feeling the skirting is pinching it tightly as well as pushing it down at edge.

Get installer back for a look

jfh · 12-10-2025 11:56AM

Thanks guys for the advice, the skirting is definitely putting pressure on it alright. The retailer provided the installer, their usual guy wasn't available so they contacted outside guy, I'm not sure if he was experienced at karndean flooring. That's the crux of the matter, retailer is advising that we need to pay couple of hundred now to get them replaced, it's due to the foundations etc

jfh · 12-10-2025 11:57AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123898486#Comment_123898486

Hi tabby, it's fixed to adhesive.

tabby aspreme · 12-10-2025 12:10PM

It looks like it's lifted away from the adhesive, is it a very narrow strip, did the installer measure the width of the room before he started to ensure the first and last row are a similar width

jfh · 13-10-2025 09:51PM

That's a good point tabby, all the boards that are lifting are narrow boards, its like the skirting board is putting pressure on the boards and lifting them up.

jfh · 13-10-2025 09:55PM

Quick question for those that have karndean, should the layout be that you end up with full boards at both ends of the room?

mickdw · 14-10-2025 03:28PM

Where there are steps in alignment of walls etc, it is sometimes impossible to avoid however in normal circumstances there is no need for anything less than half board anywhere as for example quarter board each end can be re set out to be three quarter each side instead.

Karndean Flooring Lifting – Anyone Else Had This?

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