High-Rise Penthouse LVT — Canary Wharf

A 29th-floor apartment in one of Canary Wharf's landmark residential towers — concrete sub-floor, underfloor heating, and strict building management rules restricting power tools to 9am–5pm weekdays. This is the kind of project that requires planning before a single tile is cut.

Access and Logistics

Materials were pre-staged in the underground car park the evening before and transported to the 29th floor in timed lifts slots during permitted hours. Every piece was accounted for before work began — returns or additional trips would have cost half a day.

The sub-floor was screed on UFH, fully commissioned, moisture tested at 0.4% CM, and primed the morning of day one. By the afternoon, laying was underway.

The Floor

The client — a finance professional who splits time between London and Singapore — had a specific reference in mind: the polished concrete floors of a hotel lobby in Tokyo. We matched it as closely as possible using Karndean Van Gogh Rigid Core in Mocha Stone: a 600x300mm tile with convincing depth, texture, and vein movement that reads as natural stone from any normal viewing distance.

The floor was glued down in a running bond pattern, with all cuts made using a score-and-snap cutter to stay within noise restrictions for most of the day. Only the perimeter cuts required a saw, completed in a single 45-minute window each morning.

Finish

A colour-matched silicone bead at all vertical junctions and brushed chrome T-bar thresholds at doorways completed the installation. The result was handed over clean, polished, and ready for the client's furniture installation the following day.