Timber oak herringbone floor installation

Putting value into the floor of your home is one of the best things you can do. Functionally and aesthetically, this element can completely re-vamp a home or showcase a design like no other element can.

For our home we were keen on a herringbone style pattern, it has made its way into many of our projects in the past, so it’s fair to say we’re a bit obsessed.

One of the few ways to achieve this design in timber is through a parquetry style board, we decided to go with a tongue and groove engineered French Oak floorboard.

This board is easy to lay because it’s made from a high-quality material. Coming prefinished, pre-edged and ready to install, it takes a lot of the labour out of achieving an impressive finish.

This board design relies on an adhesive layer between your subfloor surface and the board itself to stick together, so a notched trowel gluing method is required here. The boards fully interlock together through the tongue and groove system, so once you get a bit of momentum you can really fly along.

The only catch with buying a herringbone design product is going to be the cuts and wastage along your edges. These boards have a left and right hand side board due to the pattern requirements, so getting your head around this and ordering enough square m’s for your project requires some careful considerations and allowances. For this pattern, I would advise an ample 15% wastage to cover losses around edges and boards you simply can’t re-use from all the large 45deg end cuts against the walls.

Installation is quite simple after your main centre run is set up. Its critical this main or “anchor run” is perfectly straight as each layer you install against this can quickly turn ugly if it’s not. A 1mm gap at the start of your install will result in 4-5mm at the other end of the room, so avoid this by getting it right at the start.

As seen in the below diagram, start with the central anchor run until it ends to a wall, then from either side, work following the arrows by alternating between left and right boards for each run. You’ll see quite quickly if you’ve grabbed the wrong boards as the tongue and groove won’t line up, you end up with tongue and tongue in some area’s.

Make sure to keep a 5-10mm tolerance against all of your walls to allow for expansions and movement of the home. The cuts at the end and along the edges can take some time to complete, but after a couple of runs you’ll get the hang of it and will start to gain momentum.

This install can be done with one person, however with two you can ensure that the glue is being installed ahead of the boards that allows a seamless workflow. I highly recommend you get someone to give you a hand on this one.

See how we installed our timber oak herringbone floor: