Creating A Staggered Look With Laminate Flooring

After laying out your flooring in the entire room re attach your trim and baseboard.

Creating a staggered look with laminate flooring.

For best results the simplest method is to stagger the joints in thirds. Place the first plank next to one of the walls in the corner then snap the end of it into the next plank in the row using the built in tongues and grooves. Some manufacture even recommends more. It may depend on where the stagger will take place.

The national wood flooring association recommends maintaining randomness when staggering floor planks. The main problem with laminate flooring that has not been properly staggered is that it is more likely to separate from the boards it is adjoined to. Therefore rip your first row of planks to be 2 wide. Also make sure the staggering results in irregular flooring.

Angle your flooring at about 10 15 degrees for it to fit easily. Another way is to avoid regular stagger patterns such as steps or lightning and h patterns. Considering the most cases the stagger ranges from 6 to 12. Let s say you re working with 5 planks and your floor is 154 across.

Staggered joints eliminate vulnerable seam joints and give the floor a fluid and uniform look. Your floor will have 30 full planks with 4 left over. The trick to properly laying your wood flooring is to stagger the seams so they appear random. Likewise there s no particular specification for laminate floor staggering.

This will make your floor symmetrical. But try to avoid shorter flooring stagger. This type of flooring allows you to create cut outs for protrusion. A floating floor that is not adequately staggered will look odd and not have the strength and structural stability of a properly laid laminate floor.

A laminate flooring stagger pattern is ideally random with spacing between end joints between 6 and 10 inches depending on the plank width. Once you have cut them out install your flooring. 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. Adding wood floor to your home gives it an instant facelift making it appear classic and more expensive.

Snip off the top 1 inch. Starting the rows with different sized planks will create a staggered look which actually makes the laminate flooring stronger. One way to do this is to maintain a minimum distance between adjacent end joints of at least 6 inches.