Sourcing wooden doors and wood flooring from China

Mostly zero duty

Read from the UK Trade Tariff on 25 September 2026, multilayer engineered wood flooring, bamboo flooring panels, wooden doors and their frames of coniferous or non-tropical hardwood, and cellular wood panels all carried 0% duty on goods from China. Windows and French windows of non-coniferous, non-tropical wood carried 2%. No line carried an anti-dumping measure.

Tropical-wood doors and windows have their own codes, so the species decides the line; write it into the product specification and confirm the commodity code. For window coverings, see our wooden window shutters sourcing guide. For exterior shutters, see our guide to sourcing wooden exterior shutters.

Timber due diligence

Builders' joinery and carpentry of wood, heading 4418, is listed in the annex of the timber regulation that Great Britain retained, Regulation 995/2010, and Article 4 prohibits placing illegally harvested timber on the market and requires the business that first places it there to exercise due diligence. For a door or a floorboard, that means knowing the species and country of harvest of every wood component, including cores and veneers. For veneer sourcing, see our guide to wood veneer sheets.

The plywood guide covers the same due diligence for panels; ask the factory for species, origin and supporting documents before the order. For marine panels, see our marine plywood sourcing guide. For structural timber purchases, see our glulam timber beam sourcing guide. For structural panels, see our CLT panel sourcing guide.

Construction standards

Flooring and external doors and windows are construction products with harmonised standards, EN 14342 for wood flooring and EN 14351-1 for windows and external pedestrian doors, which set the characteristics the manufacturer declares. Ask for the declaration of performance and test reports for the exact product.

Fire doors are a separate route: the evidence covers the complete tested doorset, frame, leaf, hardware and seals together, so a fire door leaf bought on its own is not a fire door. Decide early whether a range includes fire-rated doors, because it narrows the factories that can supply.

Under article 4 of the retained Construction Products Regulation (EU) No 305/2011, the manufacturer of a construction product covered by a designated standard must draw up a declaration of performance when it is placed on the market.

Worked duty example

Suppose, purely for illustration, you import a container of 2,400 m² of engineered oak flooring under 4418 75 00 00. At £60,000 free on board and £3,500 to ship and insure, the customs value is £63,500. With 0% duty on engineered wood flooring, the only charge is import VAT: 20% of £63,500, or £12,700. VAT-registered businesses usually recover that in their next return. Wooden windows of non-tropical wood would pay 2% on the same value. The method is set out in how UK import duty and VAT work.

Inspection checklist

Moisture: measure moisture content with a calibrated resistance meter by the method of BS EN 13183-2 on boards and door leaves from several cartons at packing and again on arrival, against the range agreed for UK homes.

Flooring geometry: measure length, width, squareness, straightness and flatness of sampled boards by BS EN 13647, and lay a test area to check joint height differences and gaps in the locking profile.

Doors and claims: for any fire door, check the doorset has test evidence to BS 476-22 or BS EN 1634-1 for the exact construction, and check FSC or PEFC chain-of-custody certificates cover the supplier where a certified claim is made.

What goes wrong

Doors and flooring fail on moisture, bonding and paperwork. Boards leave the factory too wet or too dry and cup or gap in UK homes, the wear layer is thinner than specified, plies delaminate, and lacquer or oil finishes scratch through quickly. Doors warp or twist, arrive out of square so they will not hang, fire door claims have no doorset test, and the timber due diligence file cannot trace the species and harvest origin.

Measure moisture content on samples at packing and on arrival against the UK target, measure wear-layer thickness and check ply bonding, check the finish for abrasion and formaldehyde emission class under EN 717-1, check flooring against EN 13489 and EN 14342, measure doors for bow, twist and squareness, and collect species, origin and supply-chain documents for due diligence under the retained timber regulation 995/2010 before shipment.

Moisture, finish and packing

Timber that leaves China at one moisture content and arrives in a centrally heated UK home will move, so agree a target moisture content for the UK and ask for readings at packing, then check them at inspection. For engineered flooring, specify the wear layer thickness, the core and the finish, and test the click profile across the batch. For parquet panels, see our parquet panel sourcing guide. For unassembled parquet strips, see our wood mouldings and parquet strips guide. For doorway transitions, see our wooden door thresholds sourcing guide.

Wrap and pallet the goods against moisture for the sea voyage, and check it at the container loading. Cambridge China Bridge sources wooden doors and wood flooring by the container, with the legality and performance documents gathered before the order. See how our sourcing service works.

Related guides: Children's wooden furniture from China.