Floor Screed & Finishing in Bali — Leveling, Polished & Microcement Floors

Why Bali floors fail before the walls do

Hollow-sounding tiles in a two-year-old Canggu villa, lippage you can catch a toe on in a Denpasar shophouse, cracks wandering across a Nusa Dua apartment floor — nearly all of it traces back to the screed. The usual sins: mortar mixed too dry so it never bonded, no primer or slurry on a dusty slab, and coverings installed days after the pour because the schedule said so. The screed is the least visible layer in the whole house and the most expensive one to redo, since everything above it comes up too.

There’s a quiet economics problem underneath: screed is priced low and bid lower, so crews make their margin back on speed — pour fast, skip the primer, cover early. We price it honestly from IDR 102,000/m² and treat it as structure, because it is: the screed carries your furniture, your tile adhesive warranty and the flatness of everything you’ll ever put on it. A cracked wall can be repaired over a weekend; a failed screed under a tiled living room is demolition. That asymmetry is why we’d rather lose a bid than pour a floor we wouldn’t cover ourselves.

Screed, self-levelling, or both

The laser survey decides the build-up, not habit. Where a slab is 30–60 mm out across a room — common — a sand-cement screed from IDR 102,000/m² restores a true level and sets falls in wet areas. Where the finish is unforgiving (microcement, vinyl, 1.2-metre porcelain), we add a self-levelling pour from 144,000/m² using Mortar Utama or Drymix compounds at 3–10 mm. On decent slabs the self-leveller alone does the job, and you save the thickness, the weight and the drying weeks of a full screed.

Polished concrete and microcement, honestly

Polished concrete is Bali’s favourite café floor for a reason, and Pererenan seems to open a new one monthly. Done properly it’s a process, not a paint: diamond grinding through 4–5 grit stages, a densifier to harden the surface, then a penetrating sealer — from IDR 300,000/m² on a suitable slab. Microcement, from 780,000/m², is the seamless alternative that goes over existing screeds and upstairs floors, and pairs with the same finish on walls and showers for the one-material bathrooms every designer currently draws.

Drying times nobody wants to hear

Here’s the conversation other crews avoid: a 40 mm screed wants roughly four weeks before moisture-sensitive coverings in dry season — longer in January, when the air gives moisture nowhere to go. Tiles tolerate more, timber forgives nothing. We put the real numbers in the written schedule, then verify with a moisture meter before covering instead of arguing with physics. When a client’s tiler in Umalas was told “three days is fine” by the previous crew, the re-tiling cost more than our entire screed had.

Sequencing, protection and price

In a full fit-out, floors go in after ceilings and wall skim but before final paint — the order we run on every turnkey project, so trades stop destroying each other’s work. Finished floors get board protection until handover, not a plastic sheet and a prayer. Budget-wise: screed from 102,000, self-leveller from 144,000, polished concrete from 300,000, microcement from 780,000 per m² — the pricing page shows how that sits in a whole-villa budget, and the laser survey that fixes your exact number is free.