The son of an interior designer, Rob was already painting walls and hanging wallpaper at 14. After assisting the family interior design business and building two homes of his own, Rob has been working as a freelance writer since 2010, specializing in flooring, remodeling, and HVAC systems. Rob is also a pastor, serves on the Church Board and continues to give sermons. He is married to Diane, and they have 3 kids and 2 grandkids.
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Vinyl flooring planks are all the same length, unlike random-length hardwood planks. This can lead to eye-catching, and not in a good way, weird joint patterns. Hence the question: “How do I stagger vinyl plank flooring?”
Get this wrong, and your floor will look like an amateur installed it. Get the vinyl plank flooring layout right and your friends won’t believe you did it yourself.
Below, you will see what tools and supplies you will need for this process as well as the typical prices for each item. We will also break down step-by-step what you will need to do in order to properly stagger your vinyl flooring. It’s not just the LVT staggered pattern that counts. Staggering vinyl flooring also keeps the structural integrity of the floor intact, reducing the risk of issues such as plank bowing, separating or warping.
Tools:
Supplies:
We’ll split this process into two phases, prepping your planks and then installing the correct pattern. The essential tip to staggering your vinyl plank flooring is to ensure that the end of each plank is at least 6 to 8 inches away from the closest seam in the row before. This will create a random stagger pattern, which is what you want.
Without these crucial steps, a bit of the shine will be taken off your vinyl plank flooring patterns.
Also, read the installation material that comes with the flooring. It will remind you to do things like use 1/4-inch spacers between planks and walls.
That’s the general idea. But eyeball the first piece of each new row. Even lay out all the pieces before snapping them in place. Will the joints look randomly placed? That’s good. If they look too uniform, you’ve got an H-joint or Step/Lightning problem – which can be solved by following the information below.
Before getting specific, the general solution is to cut the first plank of the next row at a length 2-3 inches different than any first plank in a row yet – as long as it is at least 6 inches.
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