Advice Staggering Laminate Flooring

W hen laying a new laminate floor you should be looking to stagger the laminate boards.

Advice staggering laminate flooring.

How to stagger floating floors. One way to do this is to maintain a minimum distance between adjacent end joints of at least 6 inches. Today s wood flooring products have tongue and groove construction or click lock fasteners that hold the planks of wood together. Not staggering laminate floor will compromise its stability.

Even with proper connections. If you place laminate flooring on a weak or uneven sub floor the new floor will be compromised and eventually buckle damage the laminate locking system creak or create micro gaps in the new floor. Laminate flooring will be a permanent fixture in your home for years so installing it correctly is key. For many staggering the laminate boards seems quite difficult.

A laminate flooring stagger pattern is ideally random with spacing between end joints between 6 and 10 inches depending on the plank width. When you have areas of boards that are not staggered such as seen in the photo you have created areas that tend to move as a separate unit. Most dips can be taken care of with a trowel and vinyl floor patch. Another way is to avoid regular stagger patterns such as steps or lightning and h patterns.

Use our laminate flooring installation tips to avoid potential problems with your floor before and after your installation. But understanding the basic concepts can really help you out. A random pattern can be hard to achieve when all the planks are the same length but you can do it using offcuts from previous rows to start new rows. Sub floors are typically concrete or cement and develop weaknesses over time.

There come to no steadfast regulations for staggering while laying laminate flooring with a rather careful staggering the floor can give a pleasing outlook. A dip in the floor will cause a soft spongy section in the laminate floor. Print our installation dos and don ts list for your reference. Laminate flooring is a floating floor.

Avoid self leveling floor compounds especially on older homes says jay our flooring pro. While there are no steadfast rules to doing this if you understand the basic concepts as to why it matters you will more likely than not lay a floor that is more aesthetically pleasing likely to last a lot longer and require much less ongoing maintenance.