But aesthetics matter and that means you should stagger the joints while laying out your flooring.
How to lay wood flooring staggard seams.
Ensure you maintain a minimum length for end boards.
How you arrange these planks in size is up to you and the result has little effect on the functionality of the floor.
That makes 6 inches the most common minimum spacing for 2 and 3 inch hardwood boards but laminate planks are typically wider than this.
You can print this out and follow it whilst laying laminate flooring.
Even with proper connections.
As a rule you never want the seams of adjacent boards to be less than 8 inches apart i.
The national wood flooring association recommends maintaining randomness when staggering floor planks.
Some wood flooring comes with several lengths in the same package to help you stagger the seams.
Separate them by length so you can grab different lengths each time.
The rule of thumb that professional flooring installers follow is to stagger the end joint of adjacent rows by a distance equal to 2 or 3 times the width of the plank.
Lay out your wood planks by size.
Today s wood flooring products have tongue and groove construction or click lock fasteners that hold the planks of wood together.
To start row 3 cut a full width plank to the length of the trimmed ripped piece at the end of row 1.
Keep the lengths random and at least 6 in length.
Use 1 2 inch spacers to assist in maintaining the 1 2 inch expansion gap between the first row of flooring planks and the wall.
Put the first board up against the mason s line with the groove side facing away from the walls.
Another way is to avoid regular stagger patterns such as steps or lightning and h patterns.
When laying out the boards keep in mind to never have the ends of boards in adjacent rows line up with each other.
How to install laminate flooring like a boss laminate floor blog.
How to stagger floating floors.
Lay out a box of hardwood boards ahead of the installation to visualize lengths wood grain and colors of the boards.
For row two score and snap the first plank in half.
Its end should be at least 6 to 8 inches apart from the closest seam in row one.
This will stagger the seams between the adjacent rows in a random way.
Most hardwood floors consist of many individual planks or boards measuring differing lengths but having the same width.