Which Way Should Wood Flooring Run

By | May 15, 2025

Which Way Should Wood Flooring Run – Choosing your floor layout pattern is a very important step in planning your renovation/remodel. This has an unknowingly huge impact on how big the space can look, as well as affecting the overall flow of your home. You may be very surprised at how different a room can look, simply by changing the direction in which the floor is laid.

When considering solid hardwood floor installation layouts, there are a few different options. From classic straight strip flooring to eccentric mosaic parquet designs, we want to provide you with the flooring you’ve always dreamed of, while guiding you to something that works best in your particular space. Here is an overview –

Which Way Should Wood Flooring Run

This layout option is by far the most popular for solid hardwood installation today. Generally, if you have decided on hardwood flooring, the normal idea is long straight lines. Now you have to decide whether it will be parallel or perpendicular to the rooms’ doorway. You will find that it is a common recommendation to install hardwood floors perpendicular to the doorway, so that the lines of the floor can “invite” you into the space. On many occasions, the size and shape of the particular room/space to receive the hardwood floor will simply flow better and look larger with the floor running parallel to the door. Whether you choose a narrow strip floor or a custom wide plank, you can’t go wrong with choosing a straight-lay installation.

Which Way Should Wood Floors Run In A Hallway?

Random width hardwood floors allow you to choose the ratio of narrow planks to wide planks. These floors are highly customizable and can provide a more rustic look and an old-world feel. Mixing wide planks with more narrow strip flooring is a true couture floor; no two floors will be exactly the same. The random width floor has recently grown in popularity due to the rise of installing reclaimed hardwood floors. With a random width, the mill can have less waste, and use more of the reclaimed wood material in different sized boards. Choosing to install a random width hardwood floor is sure to make your home stand out.

Installing hardwood floors in a diagonal direction, believe it or not, used to be “the norm” for households. Today, the new “norm” lays the floor straight along the length of the room. Installing hardwood flooring on a diagonal works best in large spaces and on a larger scale. Although a 45 degree angle is the most commonly used, this does not make it the only option. Some homeowners decide to have their wood flooring installed at as little as a 10 degree angle. Choosing a slight angle to install your hardwood floor can help with the crooked lines of walls that aren’t square to each other (which are more common than not), and eliminate that angular piece of flooring you often end up with. get a room Installing it on a diagonal helps give the impression of straight walls because there are no floor seams that are supposed to be perfectly parallel to them. Slanted floors are also a beautiful option for inlays and can act as a decorative focal point in any space.

Parquet flooring is wooden flooring made into geometric shapes, installed in a repeating pattern. The most popular parquet floor pattern of all time is said to be the Herringbone pattern. The second, which has become more and more popular in recent years due to its straight lines and modern appeal, is the Chevron pattern.

Herringbone is a pattern of parquet, created by alternating rows of wooden floors. The center line looks like a zig-zag with the ends of the equal-sized pieces overlapping one after the other. The Herringbone pattern originated all the way back in the Roman Empire, when they discovered the stability benefits of laying their brick roads in this pattern. 50,000 miles of roads were laid in this brick interlocking pattern beginning around 500 BC. Although the herringbone pattern itself was used on the exterior and interior of houses, it was not until the 16th century that it was used as an interior floor pattern. Some of the earliest herringbone floors can be dated back to the 16th century in France, and were for the home of the royal family. The pattern has come a long way from those brick roads leading to Rome; there are so many different design aspects possible with this beautiful parquet floor pattern. Today, people are experimenting with alternating different colored boards, even random bursts of a bright bold color somewhere in the mix. With wooden floors, the colors are truly unlimited, and with a pattern as stylish as Herringbone, the possibilities are only limited to the imagination. Herringbone floors on a small or large scale bring a magnificent design element; it’s timeless, classic and beautifully chic.

How To Install Vinyl Plank Flooring

Chevron, similar to the Herringbone pattern, also consists of equally sized wooden planks laid at an angle. The difference between the two patterns is where the planks meet in the middle. While the Herringbone pieces are perfect rectangular shapes that overlap each other (creating the zig-zag look), the Chevron pieces have corners at the ends that meet perfectly along their adjacent row, creating a straight line instead of ‘ a zig-zag in the center. The Chevron pattern has been increasing in popularity lately because of its modern look with long, clean, straight lines. Both the Herringbone and Chevron patterns of parquet flooring were used in homes of royalty, palaces, castles, and swept across Europe during the Renaissance era. The palace at Versailles is known to have only 1 room that does not have it’s now famous “parquet de Versailles” which is a square parquet used for the palace; this one room instead has the Chevron pattern of parquet floors.

Choosing to install a beautiful Chevron pattern anywhere in your home, whether it’s a small inlay, or on a large scale throughout, is sure to turn heads, and a touch of grandeur and uniqueness style will add.

Most modern homes are built using floor joist systems which are wooden joists that attach to the homes frame beams, with a plywood sub-floor on top. Because every house settles to some degree, and the building material is typically wood, you can expect movement. Keeping this in mind, it is always recommended to install solid hardwood floors in the opposite direction of the joists to give your floor extra stability. If your wooden floor is laid in the same direction as the houses joists, you can expect the floor to sag, sag and even separate over time.

If you’re dead set on installing your floor in the same direction as your joists, adding an additional layer of plywood perpendicular to your existing plywood subfloor will give you that option. The extra layer added to your subfloor will successfully give your new hardwood floor all the support it needs, and the freedom to choose to lay the floor in any direction you want.

Flooring Patterns, Directions And Layouts: What To Choose To Get The Most Out Of Each Space

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website to function and that are specifically used to collect user personal data via analytics, advertisements, other embedded content are called non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to obtain user consent before using these cookies on your website. With the rise in popularity, it’s no surprise that luxury vinyl planks are dominating the flooring industry. That’s because these beautiful wood-look tiles and planks are available in a wide range of realistic designs, colors and textures. Moreover, unlike natural wooden floors, it is very easy to lay. This means DIYers can play around with various directional and pattern options for their wonderful new floors. Still, after choosing your favorite LVP material and possibly pattern, you may be wondering which way the boards should go! While you always have the final say, check out our helpful tips for laying your vinyl.

Intermediate Installation + Cp Testing, Herndon, Va

You probably can’t wait to get your new floors installed, and we totally understand your excitement! But before you choose the new pattern for your luxury vinyl tiles or planks, you should analyze the space to see if any of the following considerations

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