The title compound, C20H18O3, crystallizes in the space group P21/c with one mol­ecule in the asymmetric unit of the cell. The fluorene skeleton is nearly planar and the crystal structure is composed of mol­ecular layers extending parallel to the (302) plane. Within a layer, one formyl oxygen atom participates in the formation of a Carene—H...O bond, which is responsible for the formation of an inversion symmetric supra­molecular motif of graph set R22(10). A second oxygen atom is involved in an intra­molecular Carene—H...O hydrogen bond and is further connected with a formyl hydrogen atom of an adjacent mol­ecule. A Hirshfeld surface analysis indicated that the most important contributions to the overall surface are from H...H (46.9%), O...H (27.9%) and C...H (17.8%) inter­actions.