How do I fix lifting laminate?

Laminate lifts for three quite different reasons, and relaying it without identifying which simply repeats the problem. The pattern of the lifting is the diagnosis.

Safety

What you'll need

• Pull bar and tapping block
• Replacement boards (optional)
• Multi-tool or saw (optional)
• Spacers (optional)

Step by step

1. Look at where and how it is lifting.Peaking along a line in the middle: no expansion gap. Swollen and rough at the joints: water. Individual board lifted at one end: failed click joint or an uneven subfloor. Each needs a different response.
2. Check for moisture first.Feel the boards and the ones around them. Swollen, soft or rough edges mean water, and those boards cannot be recovered — laminate swells irreversibly. Find the leak before anything else.
3. Check the expansion gap.Laminate is a floating floor and expands with humidity. It needs a gap of roughly 10mm around every edge, hidden by skirting or beading. Without it, the floor has nowhere to go and peaks in the middle.
4. Create an expansion gap if that is the cause.Remove the beading or skirting, and trim the board edges back with a multi-tool where they touch the wall. Often the floor settles back down within a day or two once it can move.
5. Check the gap at doorways and pipes too.Commonly missed. Any point where the floor touches something solid — a door frame, a radiator pipe, a threshold — restricts it just as effectively as a wall.
6. Check the subfloor is level.A board lifting at one point over a hump will keep doing so. Laminate needs a flat base within a few millimetres over two metres.
7. Replace damaged boards from the nearest edge.Click flooring unclips in sequence. Remove the beading, lift boards back from the nearest wall to the damaged one, replace, and clip back. Slower than cutting but it leaves an intact floor.
8. Cut a board out only if you cannot reach it.Cut the middle of the damaged board out, remove the pieces, then trim the tongue off the replacement and glue it in. It is a last resort and it is not reversible.

Tips

• Keep spare boards from the original installation. Matching laminate later is very difficult — ranges change constantly.
• New laminate should acclimatise in the room for 48 hours before laying. Skipping this is a common cause of movement afterwards.
• If a large area is water-damaged, check the subfloor underneath and let it dry completely before relaying. Trapped moisture destroys the new boards too.

Questions people ask