Usually, selecting the direction of your wood or vinyl plank flooring comes down to personal preference. The way your floors are laid out can affect the entire feeling of the room, making it feel larger, smaller, busier or calmer.
Choose the direction that makes the most sense to you and your qualified installer. Palmetto Road Impact Collection, Waterline. Remember that if you have any questions or are dealing with a particularly challenging space, nothing compares to getting advice from a professional installer or having a local pro do the job. Taking a little extra time to visualize your layout or consult a local professional will help ensure that you get gorgeous, long-lasting flooring.
Share this page:. Find a professional flooring installer near you. If you were putting down a wood floor, you are likely using pieces of varying lengths, making a direction change a bit easier, but laminate flooring is different.
Since these sit on top of the floor, they create an uneven surface and can be a trip hazard. Transitioning from horizontal to vertical at the doorway seems natural and will also serve to help set the room off on its own. Following the directions included with the flooring is pretty straightforward, but two questions remain. Exceptions abound, but much more often than not, you want to start from the left at the top of the room when laying your flooring, depending on your orientation.
If you are installing so that the flooring runs parallel to you for instance, the flooring will run with the longest wall, and the longest wall is on your left , start on the left side. If you are reaching out in front of you to install that longest wall is straight ahead of you , then start at the top.
Almost always, the answer to this is no. Laminate flooring is its own monster, so it has its own rules. Anyone who has installed ceramic tile knows the benefits of starting in the middle, but this applies to ceramic tile. Laminate flooring does not follow these same rules. For one, the tongue-and-groove nature of most laminate flooring presupposes that installation will run left to right.
For another pragmatic thing, if you start in the middle, you will spend much more time cutting pieces and struggling to fit them in along the edges of the room than you otherwise have to.
While starting in the middle of the room is not a mortal sin, it is simply not practical given the construction and constraints of laminate flooring. Do not apply skills and practices from one kind of project to an entirely different one. Save yourself time, money, and frustration, and start at the left side of the room.
While laminate flooring can do wonders for your home, its successful deployment depends on planning and decision-making carried out before the first trip to the hardware store. Each of those options has its merits and, depending on the situation, drawbacks. There are no rules that absolutely must be followed, as floor installation over the years has yielded the best practices that anyone installing laminate flooring should consider before starting the project. Hi there! My name is Jack and I write for ToolsOwner.
I have a passion for everything related to tools and DIY projects around the house. If the room contains several doors and windows and following any of the design guidelines above can work, then opt for the direction that is easiest and more efficient to install. Try to minimize wastage by minimizing the cutting of planks. So test out a laminate floor direction that will give you the least amount of cuts needed to install the whole floor. It is easier to decide which way to lay your laminate floors if you have a clear design intent you want to achieve.
Would you like to lead the eyes to a focal point in the room? Would you like to accentuate the length of the room? Would you like to balance a long narrow room by giving an illusion of width? These are just some of the examples of a design goal that can be achieved just by laying the laminate flooring a certain way.
The long lines created by the laminate floor can naturally lead the eye in a certain direction in your home or room. Take advantage of this effect to create a unique experience of leading the eye to an area of importance in your home. This could be the fireplace of your home, a big hall from the entrance, or an art piece. Using the same direction of laminate flooring throughout the house will give the design a unifying and cohesive look.
When choosing one direction to use to lay your laminate flooring in multiple rooms of your home, test out each of the design guidelines listed above and see how it looks in each of the rooms.
Choose the best configuration that benefits and looks good with the majority of the rooms but give priority to what you consider as the main areas of your home. The main areas could be your foyer or main entryway, the main hallway, or the living room where the fireplace is located.
You can change the direction of laminate flooring. In an open plan design though, this is discouraged. Just like any other plank flooring materials, changing the direction of your laminate flooring will require a transition strip in between the two differing plank directions. Unlike hardwood floors or vinyl planks though wherein the transition strip can be flat and flush with the rest of the floor, the transition strip used for laminate floors juts out.
Having a transition strip that is not flush with the rest of the floor can become a tripping hazard. This can also be a place where dust or dirt can collect or where your mop can frequently hit. You could, however, get away with changing the direction of your laminate floor if the room is separated from the rest of the house with a door. The transition strip will then be located aligned to the door when it is closed.
If you are a visual person and might make better decisions if you can see your options, then consider sketching out a plan. A better option is to use an application that can help you visualize how the laminate flooring will look like when laid in a certain direction. Reward flooring has a web app called Room Visualizer that will allow you to upload a picture of your room and then give you visual feedback on how the floor will look when you lay your planks in a certain direction.
Laying your laminate flooring in a certain direction can alter the design and look of your home in a positive or negative way. If aesthetics matter to you, then choosing the best direction to lay laminate flooring does matter. If you intend to sell your house in the future, you should make sure that whatever way you lay your laminate flooring should be aesthetically pleasing to the majority of people.
Choose how you personally prefer the flooring to look. He is an architect for more than 20 years. He is passionate about design and architecture and enjoys sharing his knowledge and information with people as well. Basements are one of the areas in our homes that can be used for just about any function.
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