Hardwood Laminate Appearence

One of the important factors in planning your layout is, how the finished product will look. Things like window lighting and room size/shape determine which direction your flooring will be going. When possible, position the flooring so that it runs perpendicular to sunlight coming in through windows. This will maximize the reflection and give it that 'mirrored' look. Of course, you can't make that the only factor you consider. The general look of the room will determine how it should go as well.

Take our project for example. When installing over a plank subfloor, you have to run the laminate perpendicular to the subfloor. This is much more important than the sunlight thing. In this case, it meant ignoring the sunlight factor. It worked out nicely though because the direction we laid in looked the best.

Finding a Starting Point

The next task is finding a starting point. Things that have to be considered are hallways, openings where two rooms meet and common walls in adjecent rooms. The install that we did here was a bit tricky. We had two rooms, the kitchen and the dining room. They didn't have a common exterior wall. This is helpful for laying out where to begin. Getting things to line up in separate rooms can be tricky. Find out more about what we did.