Which Way To Lay Plank Flooring

Flooring experts recommend installing flooring boards perpendicular to the floor joists in a house with a plywood subfloor.

Which way to lay plank flooring.

If installing in a room with little to no natural light run the floors with the length of the room. Consider your dimensions a floating floor should not run more than 40ft long or 20ft wide and must be broken up at these dimensions. If the planks are cut make sure the cut edge is facing the wall. To combat this problem lay the flooring horizontally.

Depending on how you want to show your room you can choose the orientation of the laminate flooring panels. Run it from the front door straight to the back of the house perpendicular to the front. Installing them parallel creates the possibility that the floor will sag. This is a great way to highlight the color and capture the texture of your flooring.

Sightlines running your hardwood planks from your main entrance toward the opposite wall will help simplify the sightline and makes the room appear less busy. Your goal is to create the flattest smoothest surface possible as the underlayment for the vinyl plank flooring. Prepare the floor. Vinyl plank flooring can usually be laid right over existing flooring but if there are any high spots they should be sanded down to create a flush surface for the new floor.

Whereas if you want to give the hallway a wider appearance it is better to lay the panels in the widthways direction. A way to avoid transitions or to create a nice impactful visual statement consider laying your wood floors in a diagonal or herringbone pattern throughout your house. The way your floors are laid out can affect the entire feeling of the room making it feel larger smaller busier or calmer. The length of the planks will make your space appear larger.

Lay the first row of vinyl plank flooring along the wall leaving the manufacturer recommended amount of expansion space between the plank s edge and the wall usually about 1 4 inch. You want those boards to look like they are laid they way they are in a bowling alley all the way into the home through to the back. The most common way to lay install hardwood flooring is by aligning the planks parallel to the longest wall or run in the installation. Be mindful of the wood grain pattern and design of your floor.

For example if you want a hallway to seem longer it is better to use the laminate flooring in the lengthways direction. Apart from a few exceptions like sagging joists this is the preferred direction to lay wood floors because it provides the best result aesthetically. Just like a horizontally striped shirt can make people look wider than they are the horizontal stripes created by the floor boards have the same effect on a room.