What to expect
| Typical duration | Room 3–6 days · whole house 2–4 weeks |
|---|---|
| Cost band | Figures live in the cost index |
| Permit required | No |
| Seasonal constraint | Year-round · terrace work avoids peak heat |
The depth problem
Open a floor in a traditional Santorini house and you frequently find the finish, a thin bed, and then rock or a solid slab. There is no void, no screed depth to speak of, and nowhere to hide anything.
Every downstream decision follows from that: where a bathroom can go, whether underfloor services are possible at all, whether you can achieve drainage falls, and whether insulation is available without raising the floor and losing head height in a room that may already be low.
- Raising the floor locally is sometimes the answer, and it has to be checked against door heads, stair risers and — in a vaulted room — the curve of the ceiling.
- Routing services in the wall rather than the floor is frequently better in old buildings, and it should be decided before plastering.
- A pumped waste solution can rescue a bathroom position that has no gravity fall available, at the cost of a maintenance item.
Moisture from below
A floor sitting directly on rock or on ground with no membrane will transmit moisture. In a traditional building that was fine, because the floor finish was vapour-open and the moisture evaporated away.
Lay a sealed modern finish — vinyl, an impermeable adhesive, an engineered board with a plastic underlay — on the same floor and the moisture has nowhere to go. It collects at the interface, and the finish lifts, cups or grows mould underneath.
Where a membrane can be installed properly it changes the options entirely. Where it cannot — which is common when depth is unavailable — the finish has to be vapour-open, and that narrows the choice to stone, unsealed tile bedded appropriately, or traditional finishes.
Terraces move, and floors on them crack
A terrace floor in full sun heats substantially through the day and cools sharply overnight. That daily cycle is relentless.
Without movement joints at perimeters and at changes of direction, and without a separating layer over the waterproofing, the finish will crack and eventually debond — and because the terrace is often someone's ceiling, that becomes a leak rather than a cosmetic problem. See waterproofing and tiling.
What we lay
- Stone, including local volcanic stone and imported material. Robust, vapour-open where laid appropriately, and correct in traditional and protected settings.
- Traditional cast and polished floors, in the local tradition of poured and ground finishes. Unbroken across a room, hardwearing, and appropriate to vaulted spaces where a grid of tiles reads badly against the curve.
- Tile, including large format where access permits — a 120 cm slab is a genuine problem on a stepped lane in Oia. See tiling.
- Timber, with honest advice: engineered board handles the humidity swing far better than solid, and neither belongs directly on damp rock without a proper build-up.
- Microcement and resin finishes, which suit vaulted rooms and low build-ups, with the caveat that they need a stable, correctly prepared substrate or they craze.
- Terrace and external paving, specified to be usable barefoot in July — some visually attractive dark stones become genuinely unusable.
Questions people actually ask
Can I put underfloor heating in an old house here?
Frequently there is not the depth, and in this climate it is rarely the best use of the money — cooling is the bigger problem. Where the build-up allows it and the property is used in winter, it works well in a cave house because of the thermal mass.
Why did my new wood floor cup?
Almost always moisture from below with a sealed finish above, sometimes seasonal humidity swing in a property that is closed for months. Both are predictable and both are avoidable at specification stage.
Can I lay large-format tiles?
Depends on the access and the substrate. Getting a 120 cm slab up a stepped lane in Oia is a genuine constraint, and large formats need a flatter substrate than most old floors offer without levelling.
What flooring works in a cave house?
Vapour-open finishes: stone, appropriately bedded tile, or a traditional cast finish. Sealing a cave floor with an impermeable system pushes the moisture to the walls instead.
Is polished concrete a good option?
It can be excellent in the right room, particularly under a vault where a tile grid fights the curve. It needs a stable substrate and it will show movement in the structure, which is worth knowing before choosing it.