Flooring Correct
How far ahead should I order flooring?
Start before you think you need to, because the install date cannot be set until your material has landed. If you are working toward a closing, a holiday or a move in, say so at the first conversation. The part that takes longest is usually not the order. It is deciding which floor you actually want.
Nobody is really asking how many weeks a floor takes. They are asking whether the thing they have circled on a calendar is still reachable, and what they would have to give up to reach it. That is a decision about which end of the project you anchor, and it is worth making on purpose.
The one fixed link in the chain
Everything about planning a floor follows from a single constraint: nothing gets installed until the material is physically here, so the install date gets set once your order has landed rather than on the day you place it. The sequence that leads up to that is laid out on our installation process page.
That means an install date is an output, not an input. You cannot pick one and work forward. You pick the things that feed it, in this order: what you are buying, how much of it your rooms take, and when the order goes in. Everything else on your calendar is downstream of those three.
Anchor to the date and shorten the selection
If there is a hard date, a closing, a holiday, a move in, a baby, a room that cannot stay unusable, then the date is the anchor and the product list bends around it. Say the date out loud at the first conversation, before anyone pulls a sample, and you will get a straight answer about whether it fits.
What you give up is the far end of the rack. Some lines are easier to bring in than others at any given moment, and a fixed date narrows you to what can actually be there in time. What you gain is a plan that does not depend on luck. This is also the version where keeping the shortlist short genuinely matters, because the days you spend deciding come out of the same budget as everything else.
Anchor to the product and let the date move
The opposite case is a specific floor you actually want. A color that only exists in one line, a plank width that suits the room, a texture nothing else matches. Here the product is the anchor and the calendar is the flexible part.
What you give up is certainty about when the room comes back into use. What you gain is the floor you will still be happy with in a decade, which is the longer half of the trade. If you are in this case, decide early whether the date is genuinely soft, because a soft date that quietly hardens later is how people end up settling for their third choice with a week to go.
Anchor to nothing, which is the strongest position there is
If no date is forcing you, you are in the best position of the three and it is worth knowing that. You can order whatever you want, take your time with color, and pick an install window that works around your week rather than around a deadline. Nothing about the plan is fragile.
The trap in this case is drift. A project with no date can sit at the shortlist stage for months and then suddenly acquire a deadline from somewhere else, at which point you are in the first case with none of the groundwork done. Set yourself a soft date anyway, even a loose one, and use it to keep the selection moving.
What actually picks between them
- Whether the date came from outside your household. A closing or a move in is fixed. A holiday is usually softer than it feels in October.
- How many rooms are involved. One bedroom is a short decision. A main level with stairs and three transitions is a long one, and the deciding is the slow part.
- Which material you are leaning toward. Some floors carry a step between delivery and a finished room that will not be hurried, which is a scheduling fact rather than a shopping one. The installation process page sets out where those steps fall in a job.
- Whether the room is currently usable. A floor you have already torn out changes a soft date into a hard one very quickly.
- Whether anyone else is working in the house. Paint, trim and cabinets all have opinions about when a floor should go down.
The part that surprises people is that the ordering itself is rarely the bottleneck. What special order actually means is a separate question with its own page. The bottleneck is almost always the week or two somebody spends deciding between two samples, which is why the honest advice is to start the selection earlier than feels necessary.
Bring your finalist samples and your date to the Wentzville showroom together, in the same visit, and say the date first. Then take the samples home for a proper look while the rest of it gets arranged. Call 636-332-0654.
The scheduling questions that come up first
Closings, ordering before a date exists, and where early material goes.
636-332-0654Now, and start with the conversation rather than the samples. Tell us the closing date at the first call so the honest answer about what fits arrives before you have fallen for a floor. Empty rooms are the easiest rooms anyone will ever measure or install, so a closing is genuinely good timing if the selection work happens in parallel rather than after you get the keys.
That is the normal order of events. Material lands first and the install window gets set around it, which is why the date follows the order rather than leading it. Tell us roughly which weeks are difficult for your household when you order, and that goes into the scheduling conversation instead of being discovered later.
It can, and that is worth planning for rather than avoiding. Flooring that arrives early has to be kept somewhere flat, dry and indoors, and wood in particular does better sitting in the house it is going into than in a garage. Raise storage at the measure so the arrangement is agreed rather than improvised on delivery day.
Bring the samples and the date in one visit
Carry your two or three finalists in and say the date you are working toward before anything else. We will tell you straight whether it fits, then measure the rooms so the quantity is real.
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636-332-0654