Which way should laminate or wood flooring run?

There is a structural answer and an aesthetic answer, and which applies depends on whether the floor is fixed down or floating. Most modern click flooring is floating and fixed to nothing, so the choice really is free — which is why people agonise over it.

Step by step

1. Establish first whether the floor is floating or fixed.Click laminate, click LVT and click engineered board on underlay are floating: not fixed to the structure, free to run either way. Boards nailed, screwed or glued to joists must cross them.
2. If fixed down, cross the joists at right angles.Each board then spans several joists and is supported at multiple points. Running boards parallel to joists leaves long unsupported lengths and a floor that flexes and creaks.
3. For a floating floor, start with the light.Boards running away from the main window put every joint in line with the light, so the joints sit in shadow and the floor reads as a continuous surface. Boards across the light throw a shadow line off every joint.
4. Then consider the sightline.The view from the doorway is how the room is seen most often. Boards running away from you along that line look calm; boards running across it break the room up.
5. Then consider proportion.Boards along the length make a room feel longer; across it, wider. In a narrow hallway, running along the length is almost always right; in a narrow room you occasionally want the opposite.
6. Look at the whole floor, not one room.If the flooring continues through a doorway into another room or a hall, the direction should be consistent, or the doorway becomes a visible break. Decide the hallway first and let the rooms follow.
7. Check whether the subfloor imposes anything.Over floorboards, a floating floor should ideally run across the existing boards rather than parallel with them, so it bridges rather than follows their joints and any cupping.
8. Only then think about the board length and the room shape.Running the long way usually means fewer cuts and less waste; running the short way in a long narrow room can mean cutting almost every board.

Tips

• Stand in the doorway with two boards laid loose in each direction and look at them in daylight. Ten minutes settles an argument that can otherwise run for weeks.
• In an open-plan space, the strongest sightline usually wins — often that means running with the longest wall.
• If a room has two windows at right angles, the aesthetics cancel out and you can simply choose on proportion or on waste.
• Diagonal laying is possible with floating floors and looks striking, at the cost of considerably more cutting and waste at every wall.

Common mistakes

• Running a floating floor parallel to old floorboards below — The joints of the new floor sit over the joints of the old and follow their movement and cupping. Running across them means each new board bridges several old boards, which is far more stable and hides the ridges better.
• Choosing a different direction in each room — Every doorway becomes a visible junction where the pattern changes, which reads as a mistake even to people who cannot say why. It also forces a threshold strip at every door.
• Nailing solid boards parallel to the joists — The boards are then supported only where they happen to cross a noggin, so the floor bounces, the fixings work loose and it creaks. Fixed-down boards have to run across the joists.

Questions people ask