Bamboo flooring has been sold in Australia for two decades and still sits awkwardly on the shelf. It costs less than real hardwood and it is denser than most timbers sitting beside it. It is also the only floor most people can name that does not come from a tree. So is bamboo flooring any good? Mostly yes, with a narrow brief. Here are the real bamboo flooring pros and cons, the cost per square metre, and the rooms where I would not lay it.
We sell bamboo next to laminate, hybrid and engineered timber, so we have no reason to oversell it.
The Short Answer [TL;DR]
Yes, bamboo flooring is genuinely good in dry living areas and a poor choice everywhere else. Our Solid Bamboo is strand woven, 12mm thick, 1820 x 118mm, click system, 6 colours, $61.39 per square metre. That is a little over half the price of our 14.3mm engineered Australian hardwood at $113.28. It is about $11 more than our 9.5mm SPC hybrid at $50.28. Keep it out of bathrooms and laundries, keep hard western sun off it, and it lasts.
The Straight Answer [Is It Any Good?]
Is Bamboo Flooring Any Good? The Honest Verdict
Bamboo is a good floor with a narrow brief. In a dry lounge, bedroom, hallway or study it gives you a dense natural fibre surface for half the price of engineered hardwood.
The brief is narrow because bamboo is plant fibre. It moves with moisture, shifts tone in strong sun, and is not a floor you sand back in ten years.
My honest read: buy bamboo because you want a plant fibre floor and that renewability story. Do not buy it as a cheaper route to hardwood performance, or for a whole house that is not dry. If that fits, the colours sit in our bamboo flooring range. Every board clicks together like the rest of the floating floorboards we stock.
Quick Filter [30 Seconds]
Dry rooms only. No bathroom or laundry. No unshaded western glass. Happy to replace rather than re-sand. Fail one and you want an SPC hybrid or engineered timber instead.
Material School [Strand Woven]
What Bamboo Is, and Why Strand Woven Matters
Bamboo is a woody grass, not a tree. Nobody saws a board out of a log, because there is no log. The culms are split into strips, dried to a stable moisture content, then compressed with adhesive into a billet. A board is machined out of that, so every bamboo floor is engineered in the literal sense, including the ones sold as solid bamboo.
The renewability argument holds up. Bamboo is cut from a living root system that keeps pushing up new culms, so a stand regrows without replanting. A culm matures in years where a hardwood needs decades.
Three constructions reach the Australian market. Only one is worth paying for.
| Construction | How it is made | How it reads | Density |
|---|---|---|---|
| Horizontal | Strips laid flat, glued | Wide face, visible nodes | Softest |
| Vertical | Strips stood on edge | Tight pinstripe, no nodes | A touch harder |
| Strand woven | Fibre shredded, resin saturated, pressed hard | Busy hardwood-like grain | Far denser, and what we stock |
Strand woven dominates Australian retail and is what everyone means by bamboo. Ours is strand woven, 12mm thick, 1820 x 118mm, click system, 1.94 square metres a box, in six colours. For how that differs from a stone composite board, our explainer on what hybrid flooring actually is covers the other side of the shelf.
Wear and Tear [Durability]
Is Bamboo Flooring Durable?
Yes for dents, only as good as its coating for scratches. Those get treated as one property and they are not, which is where disappointment starts.
Dent resistance is quoted as a Janka rating, the force needed to press a steel ball halfway into the surface. We do not publish a Janka figure for our bamboo, so we will not quote one. Be sceptical of any retailer who quotes one without naming the product tested. Rely on the mechanism: in a strand woven board the hardness is pressed in at the factory, and you feel it with dropped pans.
A scratch is different. It happens in the finish, not the fibre underneath, so the coating decides whether the floor looks tired at three years or ten. Mats, felt pads and a regular sweep beat any spec sheet. Our guide to fixing scratches in a hard floor applies here too.
The Balance Sheet [Pros and Cons]
Bamboo Flooring Pros and Cons
The pros.
- Genuinely dense. Strand woven takes a knock better than hardwoods near it on price.
- Real renewability. Harvested from a living root system on a few-year cycle, not a few-decade one.
- Distinctive grain. It does not look like the oak in every Australian home for a decade.
- Half the price of hardwood. $61.39 per square metre against $113.28 for engineered hardwood.
- Click system. It floats, so it goes down fast with no glue or nails.
The cons.
- It is plant fibre. It swells with moisture and shrinks as it dries, so wet rooms are out.
- It moves in strong UV. More than most floors, and carbonised tones move the most.
- Not a re-sand floor. A 12mm click board with a factory coating is a replace-it product.
- No published acoustic report on our range. If a body corporate wants documented figures, choose from our tested acoustic ranges.
- Six colours, not twenty. A narrower palette than laminate or hybrid.
The cons are situational, not quality problems. Bamboo is not badly made. It is a floor with conditions attached.
The Money [Cost Per m2]
What Bamboo Flooring Costs in Australia
Bamboo costs $61.39 per square metre for boards. Our Solid Bamboo is $119.10 a box and a box covers 1.94 square metres. Underlay, trims, delivery and laying sit on top.
The mistake people make is ordering their measured area exactly. Flooring sells in whole boxes and you need an offcut allowance. Add 10%, more if the room is full of doorways, then round up to the next box.
| Space | Area | Boxes incl 10% | Boards only |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry and hallway | 10 m² | 6 boxes | $714.60 |
| Main bedroom | 12 m² | 7 boxes | $833.70 |
| Lounge | 20 m² | 12 boxes | $1,429.20 |
| Open-plan living | 35 m² | 20 boxes | $2,382.00 |
| Whole living zone | 60 m² | 35 boxes | $4,168.50 |
| Whole home | 90 m² | 52 boxes | $6,193.20 |
Same room, different materials, decides it. A 20 square metre lounge plus 10% is 22 square metres of boards. That is about $1,351 in bamboo, $570 in our 12mm Urban Laminate at $25.91, and $766 in 6.5mm SPC hybrid at $34.82. Step up and it is $1,106 in 9.5mm SPC hybrid at $50.28, or $2,492 in 14.3mm engineered Australian hardwood at $113.28.
Scale up and the gap gets loud. Across 90 square metres plus wastage, bamboo is roughly $6,078 in boards against $2,565 in laminate, a difference of about $3,513. Price your rooms with the instant quote tool, and if measuring is the bit you are unsure about, our measurement guide walks through it.
Cross Shopping [Bamboo vs The Rest]
Bamboo vs Hybrid, Laminate and Engineered Timber
Bamboo sits above every hybrid we sell and below engineered hardwood. Here is the whole shelf on one screen.
| Range | Price per m² | Thickness | Wet areas | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solid Bamboo | $61.39 | 12mm | Not suitable | Dry living areas |
| Urban Laminate | $25.91 | 12mm | Not suitable | Budgets and rentals, AC4 |
| SPC Hybrid 6.5mm | $34.82 | 6.5mm | 100% water resistant | Budget whole-of-house |
| SPC Hybrid 9.5mm | $50.28 | 9.5mm | 100% water resistant | Wet rooms and traffic |
| Engineered Aus Hardwood | $113.28 | 14.3mm | Not suitable | Forever homes, re-sandable |
Bamboo vs hybrid. The 9.5mm SPC hybrid is about $11 per square metre cheaper, it is 100% water resistant, and it is the board we put in kitchens. Bamboo wins on material honesty: plant fibre against printed decor over a stone composite core.
Bamboo vs laminate. Laminate is less than half the price, comes in 12 colours and carries an AC4 abrasion rating. The trade-off is the core: the way a laminate board is built puts printed decor over HDF. Our comparison of laminate against vinyl and hybrid pulls those cores apart side by side. Both dislike water equally. On the spreadsheet alone, laminate wins.
Bamboo vs engineered timber. Engineered Australian hardwood is nearly double the price, and it is the only one you can sand back and recoat. That makes it the pick if this is your last floor. Our comparison of engineered timber against hybrid flooring maps the trade-offs from the timber side. You can also see every click-lock range side by side.
Room by Room [Where It Works]
Which Rooms Suit Bamboo Flooring?
Lounges, bedrooms, hallways, studies, upstairs levels. Anywhere dry. There, bamboo is excellent.
Kitchens are the borderline call. A kitchen is dry until it is not. A dishwasher hose that lets go overnight will destroy bamboo where it would not touch a hybrid. My rule: bamboo through a small kitchen open to the living area, SPC hybrid if the kitchen is the hub of a family house.
Bathrooms, ensuites, laundries and anywhere with a floor waste are a hard no, and the same goes for our laminate and engineered timber. Those rooms want a rigid stone composite core, which is why our guide to floors rated for bathrooms and laundries only recommends hybrid. The 9.5mm hybrid range is our closest match to bamboo in board scale.
Apartments need a warning. Most body corporates set a documented acoustic requirement for hard flooring. That is why so many units still run carpet instead of a hard floor. We hold no published acoustic test report for the bamboo range, and we will not imply a rating exists when we cannot show the paperwork. If you need body corporate approval, choose from the acoustic-rated ranges that come with one.
In humid coastal and subtropical areas, acclimatisation matters more. Our notes on flooring in Brisbane humidity apply directly: bamboo is the most moisture-reactive floating floor we sell.
Laying It [Floating Floor]
How Bamboo Gets Laid
Our bamboo is a click system board, so it goes down as a floating floor. That puts it on the short list of floors a confident homeowner can lay unaided, and in our DIY-friendly range. The boards lock together and sit loose with nothing glued or nailed, so the surface moves as one sheet through the seasons. It is the same sequence our step-by-step installation guide walks through. It is also how we lay every one of our click-lock floating floorboards, so bamboo, laminate and hybrid share the same prepared substrate.
Get the subfloor flat and dry first
A floating floor bridges hollows instead of following them, and hollows cause the clicking people complain about. Our guide to preparing your subfloor has the tolerances.
Leave a full expansion gap at every wall
Bamboo is hygroscopic, taking up and giving off moisture with the room. Skirting or scotia covers the gap. Nothing solid goes in it.
Sort the underlay before the boards arrive
Our SPC boards have underlay bonded to the plank. Where a board has none you buy it separately. Start with our underlay explainer. Trims and scotia live in flooring accessories.
Laying it the day it lands on the driveway
Boxes need to reach house temperature and humidity first. Sitting flat and unopened in the room does that. Lay too early and the floor acclimatises after it is locked down.
Pinning it down with heavy fixed cabinetry
Islands and built-in wardrobes sitting on the boards clamp the sheet in place. The movement then shows up elsewhere as a peak or a gap.
What Goes Wrong [Real Failures]
What Goes Wrong With Bamboo Floors
Water damage. Bamboo swells when it takes on water and shrinks as it dries. When that happens unevenly you get cupping, gapping or a lifted edge that never settles back. A spilled glass is a non-event if you mop it up. Standing water is what kills it.
Watch Out [Sun Movement]
Unshaded western glass will change the colour of your floor
Bamboo moves in tone under UV more than most floors. Carbonised bamboo is the worst of them, the darker caramel made by heating the fibre rather than staining it. Rotate the rugs and shade the harshest windows.
Peaking in summer. Almost always an expansion gap that was filled, cut too tight, or blocked by a door jamb nobody undercut. The floor grows, has nowhere to go, and lifts.
A tired floor at year three. Grit at the front door, no mats, furniture dragged rather than lifted. That is a habits problem, not a product problem.
The re-sand that never happens. People buy bamboo expecting to sand it back like solid timber. A 12mm click board with a factory coating is not that floor. Live with the finish, or buy engineered timber and check the wear layer. Our notes on what to look for in a flooring warranty help.
FAQ [Quick Answers]
Bamboo Flooring: Common Questions
Q1 Is bamboo flooring any good?
Yes, in dry rooms. Strand woven bamboo is dense, distinctive and costs about half what engineered Australian hardwood does. The limits are real: no bathroom or laundry, it shifts tone in strong sun, and you cannot sand it back.
Q2 What are the pros and cons of bamboo flooring?
Pros: density, real renewability, a distinctive grain, a click system that floats, and $61.39 per square metre against $113.28 for engineered Australian hardwood. Cons: it is plant fibre so wet rooms are out, it moves in colour under UV, and it cannot be re-sanded. We also hold no published acoustic report for it.
Q3 How much does bamboo flooring cost in Australia?
Our Solid Bamboo is $119.10 a box covering 1.94 square metres, which is $61.39 per square metre. A 20 square metre lounge needs 12 boxes with 10% for offcuts, about $1,429. A 90 square metre home needs 52 boxes, roughly $6,193.
Q4 Is bamboo flooring durable?
For dents, yes. Strand woven bamboo is compressed under very high pressure, so it takes a knock better than many hardwoods it competes with on price. For scratches it is only as good as its factory coating.
Q5 What is strand woven bamboo flooring?
It is bamboo shredded into fibre bundles, saturated with resin and compressed under very high pressure into a dense block, then machined into boards. The grain reads closer to a busy hardwood than the old node-marked look, and it is the densest of the three constructions.
Q6 Is bamboo flooring better than hybrid flooring?
It depends on the room. Our 9.5mm SPC hybrid is about $11 per square metre cheaper at $50.28, and it is 100% water resistant. It is the board we put in kitchens. Both are floating floorboards that click together over the same prepared subfloor. For a whole house, hybrid is safer. For dry living areas where the material matters, bamboo wins.
Q7 Can you put bamboo flooring in a bathroom or kitchen?
Not a bathroom, ensuite or laundry. Bamboo is plant fibre and standing water will cup, gap or lift it permanently. A kitchen is a judgement call. It is fine in a small kitchen open to the living area, but choose SPC hybrid if it is the family hub.
Q8 Does bamboo flooring scratch easily?
No more than any other factory-coated floor. The scratch happens in the coating rather than the fibre, so the finish decides how it looks in year five. Grit from the front door does most of the damage, so mats matter most.
Q9 Can bamboo flooring be sanded and refinished?
Not our range, no. A 12mm click board with a factory-applied coating is a replace-it floor, not a sand-and-recoat floor. If sanding back in twenty years is the plan, buy engineered timber and check the wear layer first.
Your Floor [Six Colours]
See bamboo in your own light before you commit
Strand woven boards, 1820 x 118 x 12mm. Six colours, $61.39 per square metre. We ship Australia-wide from our Brisbane warehouse and there is no showroom, which is a big part of why the price sits where it does. Order free samples, put them on your floor at the hour the sun is worst, then decide. Or call 0431 311 633.
Last updated: September 2026 · Written by the team at Hybrid Floors Australia
