Things to Consider Before Laying Wood Flooring

1. Acclimatise your wood flooring. Make sure your flooring has been in the room it is going to be fitted for at least 5 days before fitting. This is most important for solid woods and engineered floors, but should also be considered for some laminate floors. This will allow your floor to reach the same temperature as the room and most importantly the same humidity. This means the air water content is balanced with the moisture content of your floor. If you do not acclimatise your floor it will try and expand or contract after it is fitted, which could cause shrinkage and gapping or over expansion, which may cause lifting or bumps.

2. Leave the correct amount of expansion joint as recommended by the manufacturer this includes the whole perimeter of the room, doorways, architraves and radiator pipes.

3. Decide which direction to lay the floor, it’s normally long ways against the longest wall but there’s no fixed rule. Consider window light, entrance doorways etc.

4. Work from several packs of wood. Remember real wood can shade from box to box, mixing them as you go will avoid any large patches of dark or light planks. This is not normally necessary with laminate.

5. Look at each board before you lay it. It’s easy to install a faulty or if real wood unsightly knotted piece of wood but it’s very difficult to remove once the floor is fitted.

6. If you are using glue to stick your wooden floor to the sub-floor or to one another, make sure you remove any excess whilst the glue is wet. Set glue is much harder to remove and you can often stain or damage your new floor in the process.