How to Fix Squeaky Floors and Creaky Floorboards

Carpet does not squeak. What you are hearing is the subfloor underneath it, and the carpet is only making the noise harder to locate. The repair is a scored breakaway screw — a screw with a weak point machined into the shank, driven through the carpet and into the joist, after which the head snaps off below the pile. Done properly it leaves nothing visible: the carpet fibres close back over the hole.

• Confirm you are in a joist every time. A breakaway screw into the gap between joists grips nothing, and you cannot back it out once the head is gone.
• If the squeak stays after three screws on one joist, it is on the next joist over. Move 16 inches and try again rather than adding more screws to the same spot.
• Does carpet help with squeaky floors? It muffles them slightly, nothing more. New carpet over an unscrewed subfloor squeaks exactly as much six months later — which is why we screw the subfloor down before laying any new carpet.

A stair squeak is nearly always the front edge of the tread lifting off the riser below it. Step on the nose of the tread and it flexes down; lift your foot and it springs back. Wedge or fasten that one joint and the stair goes quiet. The second most common spot is the back of the tread where it meets the next riser up.

Fixing squeaky stairs from above

This is the only option on a closed staircase, and it works on carpeted and bare treads alike.

1. 1Step slowly on each tread — front edge, middle, back edge — until you find exactly which part makes the noise.
2. 2On carpeted stairs, use the stair version of a breakaway screw kit. Its fixture is sized for a tread, and the screws are the right length for a tread-into-riser connection.
3. 3On bare wood, pre-drill and drive two trim-head screws down through the tread into the top edge of the riser, about two inches in from each end. Fill the heads with colour-matched putty.
4. 4Angle matters more than count. Drive the screw down and slightly forward so it pulls the tread tight against the riser rather than just pinning it.

Fixing creaky stairs from underneath

If the underside of the staircase is open — a basement run, or a closet under the stairs — this is the better repair, because nothing shows on the finished side at all.

• Glue-coated wood wedges tapped into the gap between the tread and the stringer are the classic fix, and the quietest.
• Screw a glue block into the inside corner where tread meets riser. Two or three per step, driven into both surfaces.
• Have someone walk the stairs while you watch from below. You will see the exact joint that moves, which saves guessing from the top.
• Never force a wedge. Over-driving one lifts the tread and creates a new squeak one step up.

On exposed hardwood, the first job is deciding what you are fighting. Press down hard on the noisy board with your palm: if the squeak stops, the board is loose and needs a fastener. If it still squeaks under pressure, two boards are rubbing and a lubricant will do more than a screw.

An unfinished basement or a crawl space under the squeak is the best position you can be in. You are working directly on the cause instead of reaching through a finished floor to get at it, and you can close the gap rather than clamp it shut.

1. 1Have someone walk the floor above while you watch and listen from below. Mark every joint that moves with chalk — you will usually see daylight-thin movement between the subfloor and the joist.
2. 2For a thin gap, run a bead of construction adhesive into it and drive a short screw up through the joist into the subfloor. Measure twice: the screw must be shorter than joist depth plus subfloor thickness, or it comes through the finished floor.
3. 3For a wider gap, coat a cedar or pine shim in adhesive and tap it into the gap until it is snug — snug, not forced. Overdriving a shim lifts the subfloor and starts a new squeak next to the old one.
4. 4Where a whole run of subfloor flexes, screw a length of 2x4 blocking along the joist face so it supports the panel edge, or fit metal squeak-elimination brackets, which pull the two together without adhesive.
5. 5Let adhesive cure fully before walking the floor hard. Most construction adhesives want 24 hours.

This is the hardest version of the job, and the one where DIY advice goes wrong most often. Above a finished ceiling there is wiring, there may be plumbing, and there is drywall that cracks if you flex the joist bay. Everything therefore has to be done from the room above.

• Work from above using the method that matches your floor covering: breakaway screws through carpet, counter-snap screws into bare hardwood.
• Locate the joist before you drill, every single time. On an upper floor a screw that misses the joist either does nothing or ends up in a ceiling cavity you cannot inspect.
• Do not cut an access hole in the ceiling below to chase a squeak. The patching, priming, and repainting costs more than the repair, and the squeak is usually fixable from above.
• If the floor also bounces when you walk across the middle of the room, stop. Deflection over a long span is a framing question, not a fastener question.
• Radiant heat under the floor rules out blind screwing completely. One screw into a heating line turns a squeak into a leak inside the floor assembly.

A floating floor is not fastened to anything, so it cannot work loose from a joist. When laminate or luxury vinyl creaks, crackles, or pops, the noise is coming from one of four places — and three of them are installation faults rather than product faults.

The good news about floating floors: the planks come apart. Working back from the nearest wall, you can unclick your way to the problem, fix the subfloor or the pad, and reinstall the same planks. Be patient at the edges — click-lock tongues snap if you lever them, and a broken plank has to be replaced.

A squeaky floor is one of the cheapest things that can be wrong with a house. If you can reach it and you are comfortable with a drill, most squeaks are a $30 kit and an afternoon. Professional work is priced by the trip and by how much of the floor has to be re-fastened, not by the number of squeaks, which is why one noisy board and fifteen noisy boards in the same room often cost the same to fix.

Three things move these numbers more than anything else: whether there is access from below, whether the finished floor has to come up, and whether the squeak turns out to be a fastener problem or a framing one. A diagnosis visit settles all three, and ours is free — which is worth taking before you commit to a figure either way.