The national wood flooring association recommends maintaining randomness when staggering floor planks.
How to lay wood flooring staggered seams.
This will stagger the seams between the adjacent rows in a random way.
Lay out your wood planks by size.
How to stagger floating floors.
That s what you re after.
But aesthetics matter and that means you should stagger the joints while laying out your flooring.
Today s wood flooring products have tongue and groove construction or click lock fasteners that hold the planks of wood together.
How you arrange these planks in size is up to you and the result has little effect on the functionality of the floor.
Put the first board up against the mason s line with the groove side facing away from the walls.
Even with proper connections.
Its end should be at least 6 to 8 inches apart from the closest seam in row one.
You can print this out and follow it whilst laying laminate flooring.
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.
Another way is to avoid regular stagger patterns such as steps or lightning and h patterns.
That makes 6 inches the most common minimum spacing for 2 and 3 inch hardwood boards but laminate planks are typically wider than this.
Most hardwood floors consist of many individual planks or boards measuring differing lengths but having the same width.
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.
For row two score and snap the first plank in half.
Some wood flooring comes with several lengths in the same package to help you stagger the seams.
Ensure you maintain a minimum length for end boards.
Separate them by length so you can grab different lengths each time.
Here s how to install click lock engineered hardwood flooring.
How to install laminate flooring like a boss laminate floor blog.