Direction to install laminate flooring

[mynewchoice]

The time has come (my wife would argue the time has come and gone many times over) to replace our 20+ year old carpet in our upstairs rooms, as well as the hallway and stairs, and we are doing a trial of installing laminate in the spare bedroom / office.  Yesterday I ripped out all of the old carpet / padding and pulled the staples and tack strips.  There is still some more work to do to prep the sub-floor where the builders had spilled some glue or mastic or something.

On to my question...

I have always heard that wood flooring, and I assume laminate would be the same but maybe not, should be installed in the direction of the longest wall.  I have no problem with that for the office however my confusion comes in when I consider the other rooms.  Assuming we like the laminate in the office, we are planning to do it in the other three bedrooms and then only have carpet in the hallway and on the stairs.  My question is, should all of the rooms be installed in the same direction as the office that we are doing first?  Or does it not matter since we will have the carpeted hallway separating all of the rooms with transition strips?

My initial thought was that all the rooms should go in the same direction, but that would mean our master bedroom would be going against the rule of thumb to install in the direction of the longest wall in the room.  Plus, my wife doesn't think she would like how that would look in our room.  I was hung up on looking at it from the perspective of if we did the laminate through the hallway as well, it would be one long shot from the office down the hall and into our room.  But since it will all be separated by the carpet in the hallway, should we go with various directions in each of the rooms?

Does any of this make sense?  Maybe I am just being too nervous as I am not overly handy but have convinced my wife to install this laminate floor myself, so I want it to look as good as possible.  Looking forward to any wisdom you all can impart on a nervous DIY'er. =)

Thanks,
mnc

[Miss Piggy]

Would you consider also putting the laminate in the hallway? You might be happier without that "interruption" in the flooring from room to room.

We went against the grain (and very non-mustachian) and did diagonal with our new tile floor (wood-look planks). Diagonal is more work, more cuts, and more waste, but dang, it looks fantastic!

[GuitarStv]

I'd install them all in the same direction if I was also doing the hallway . . . then it's like one big floor rather than separate floors in separate rooms.  If you have a carpeted hallway, install them in whatever patter makes you happy.

[sisto]

I had the exact same problem that you describe for my house. I put the laminate in the MB (and other rooms) the same direction as the hall (long ways down the hall). It looks great, I only have transitions at the kitchen and 2 bathrooms and used t-molding. For the entry into the rooms it's completely floated off the hallway so it's one huge floating floor and looks great even now 15 years later. My MB is really long since I turned 2 rooms into 1 big one and the laminate does not look funny running off the short wall.

[Jack]

Do laminate in the hallway.

(Actually, don't do laminate at all -- do actual wood, or at least bamboo.)

Another option for the master bedroom would be to do a border and then run the boards in the long direction in the center.

[mynewchoice]

Thanks for all of the feedback--we could do the hallway as well, I guess we don't really have a reason why not to but I guess we just planned to do carpet since it would be coming up the stairs.  We definitely want carpet on the stairs but that doesn't prevent us from doing the hallway so I will have to discuss that with my wife and see what we want to do.

@Jack, we went back and forth on that and I would only consider the click-and-lock wood floors as anything beyond that would definitely not be a DIY job for me.  As we looked at our options there, I couldn't justify the cost difference for all of the bedrooms.  With overage calculated in, we are at 800 sqft for the bedrooms and the click-and-lock wood floors we were looking at were at least $1-2 more per sqft and the ones we really liked were even more of a difference. 

[endleesss]

have you looked at luxury vinyl tile (LVP) completely waterproof, and cost about the same as laminate

[mynewchoice]

have you looked at luxury vinyl tile (LVP) completely waterproof, and cost about the same as laminate

We did look at that but my wife didn't care for the options that we saw.  I am easy to please so I had found some that I liked.  We have this in our laundry room and half bath now and it has worked well.  For the bedrooms, we aren't too concerned about the waterproof aspect as there really shouldn't be much water / liquids in those rooms.

To the earlier posts, I mentioned the possibility of running the laminate through the hallway as well to make one cohesive flow and she didn't like that idea.  She thinks it would look funny to have carpet coming up the stairs and then ending in the hallway, and she prefers the break to be at each doorway.  I can live with that so now I am back to deciding which way to run each room, and plan to follow a combination of parallel to longest wall and parallel to light source, and if the two contradict each other I will run it whichever way my wife wants it to go, lol.

[Jack]

To the earlier posts, I mentioned the possibility of running the laminate through the hallway as well to make one cohesive flow and she didn't like that idea.  She thinks it would look funny to have carpet coming up the stairs and then ending in the hallway

The way to make the transition look good is to have the carpet end at the top of the top riser, so that the top step is wood. Here's a good image illustrating what I mean (linked instead of inserted with an img tag because it's very large).

@Jack, we went back and forth on that and I would only consider the click-and-lock wood floors as anything beyond that would definitely not be a DIY job for me.

Maybe I suck -- or maybe the product I was trying to use sucked -- but I once tried to install click-lock laminate and it was a disaster (it wouldn't stay clicked). I'm convinced nail-down hardwood would actually be easier.

[endleesss]

It doesn't really matter which way you run it. You will forget about it pretty quickly. I have a 2 story house, its running north south downstairs n west East upstairs

[Spork]

My inclination is to weigh both:
* long runs can be continuous (along longest wall)
* which direction the light filters in.  (IMO, it looks best if the light runs length wise)

...but both of those can be taken with a grain of salt. 

For the most part, I'm with Jack.  I am not a huge fan of the click lock flooring.  I much prefer real wood, but if doing laminate, I preferred the old school glue-up laminate.  There is a huge range of products out there from "really shitty" to "pretty good".  Even within a brand there are often many product lines.  If you are choosing something solely based on price... be careful. 

I installed > 2000 sqft of it in my previous house with much variation in quality.  But I haven't messed with the stuff in more than 10 years, so I am sure times have changed.  I went with actual wood in our next house.

[mynewchoice]

For the most part, I'm with Jack.  I am not a huge fan of the click lock flooring.  I much prefer real wood, but if doing laminate, I preferred the old school glue-up laminate.  There is a huge range of products out there from "really shitty" to "pretty good".  Even within a brand there are often many product lines.  If you are choosing something solely based on price... be careful. 

I installed > 2000 sqft of it in my previous house with much variation in quality.  But I haven't messed with the stuff in more than 10 years, so I am sure times have changed.  I went with actual wood in our next house.

We have wood floors on our 1st floor and we have had it for over 10 years.  It has lasted well but the thing we don't like is that it is oak flooring and has that golden yellowish color which we really do not care for at all.  At the time that we installed them, I don't remember there being nearly as many options as there are today.  Likewise, the options for laminate at that time were quite different than they are today.

This is part of the reason that we started by ordering enough material only for the spare bedroom / office in case we do decide that we don't really care for it.  Hopefully that won't be the case but I thought it was best to minimize my risk.  It is so hard to determine how something will be once it is down in your house when you're looking at small samples of no more than two or three planks.

Appreciate all of the feedback.

[Spork]

For the most part, I'm with Jack.  I am not a huge fan of the click lock flooring.  I much prefer real wood, but if doing laminate, I preferred the old school glue-up laminate.  There is a huge range of products out there from "really shitty" to "pretty good".  Even within a brand there are often many product lines.  If you are choosing something solely based on price... be careful. 

I installed > 2000 sqft of it in my previous house with much variation in quality.  But I haven't messed with the stuff in more than 10 years, so I am sure times have changed.  I went with actual wood in our next house.

We have wood floors on our 1st floor and we have had it for over 10 years.  It has lasted well but the thing we don't like is that it is oak flooring and has that golden yellowish color which we really do not care for at all.  At the time that we installed them, I don't remember there being nearly as many options as there are today.  Likewise, the options for laminate at that time were quite different than they are today.

If it's truly wood flooring, it should last 100+ years.  If you don't like the look, you can sand and refinish.  My wood flooring came out of a gymnasium complete with brightly painted stripes of every color.  It sands off.

[Jack]

We have wood floors on our 1st floor and we have had it for over 10 years.  It has lasted well but the thing we don't like is that it is oak flooring and has that golden yellowish color which we really do not care for at all.  At the time that we installed them, I don't remember there being nearly as many options as there are today.

Solid wood flooring has been around a long time, and there were plenty of choices 10 years ago. Maybe there wasn't quite as much variety in prefinished colored stuff and there weren't as many exotic rainforest hardwoods (which, as a mustachian you shouldn't want anyway), but I guarantee you could have gotten something like maple or pine.

If it's truly wood flooring, it should last 100+ years.  If you don't like the look, you can sand and refinish.  My wood flooring came out of a gymnasium complete with brightly painted stripes of every color.  It sands off.

+1

Nothing (except cost, hassle and time) is stopping you from re-staining your (solid) oak some other color. Can't do that with laminate, though!

[Papa Mustache]

I'll second the real wood. Took me about a day to do our largest room. Another day to do a dining room. I was told by several people to go perpendicular to the floor joists. We like that it stiffened up the floor too.

[Goldielocks]

If you have thresholds at your doors, or hall in different flooring, it won't really matter that the direction changes.

The "rule of thumb" that I was told:

1 A narrow room (or hall)  -- run the flooring cross-ways to visually expand it.
2.  If you have windows where sunlight falls to the floor, run flooring to run so that the daylight is parallel with the floor.

I am not sure if these are "true", especially #2...  but that was what I was told by interior designer.
Running it with the long wall is typically for ease of install.  Up to you if that enhances the room or not.

We ran our floor at an angle to most of the walls (we have a lot of angled walls in the home), and that gives it a lot of "energy" in those rooms.

[mynewchoice]

This project has taken a new and unfortunate twist...

The master bedroom has a significant hump running across the room, which is the joist where all of the plywood subfloor meets up.  I had tried to sand it down with my belt sander but it is too large of a hump to sand away, and as I felt any other option was beyond my capability for DIY, we went back to Home Depot and ordered their installation services.

The installer just came out this morning and he said that he would not recommend leveling compound or cement, as with it being on a wood subfloor it will expand and contract, and eventually start to crack and crumble underneath the laminate floor.  He said the only way that he would recommend to level this was to pull up the subfloor and reduce the joists down enough to remove the hump.  He estimated the cost for that to be over $1,000 for just the master BR.  Further, he said even with that it might not be perfect.

At that point, he recommended going with a real wood floor that is nailed down.  Doing that he said there would be no need to level the floor as long as it was nailed down and not glued down.

With that, I would like to ask those that are far more experienced whether that is accurate or not.  If we do go with the hardwood--as many of you had recommended--is it true that we wouldn't need to level the floors before installing?

[GuitarStv]

It depends on what the height difference is from the low to high parts of the hump, and how far apart they are.

[mynewchoice]

It depends on what the height difference is from the low to high parts of the hump, and how far apart they are.

The largest gap is about 1/4" over a 3-4 foot section.  At least that is how I understand it based on what I am seeing with my level and measuring the gap.

[GuitarStv]

It depends on what the height difference is from the low to high parts of the hump, and how far apart they are.

The largest gap is about 1/4" over a 3-4 foot section.  At least that is how I understand it based on what I am seeing with my level and measuring the gap.

It might work if you nail it down, but I'm not sure that I'd be comfortable with that level of sub-floor variation.  I'd be concerned that the bump would be visible in reflections on the floor surface after installation.

You might want to read up on using asphalt shingles to level hardwood floors.

[Goldielocks]

Vinyl plank flooring works even better at transitioning curvature...  may not be the look you want, but may save a lot of money.

[mynewchoice]

Well, we handled the bump in the road by just deciding to go back to carpet in the bedrooms.  We are tired of having the upstairs of our house dismantled as we had pulled out all of the carpet and moved most of the furniture to the lower level.  Maybe that is the easy--or actually the lazy, yet also more MMM, way of dealing with this but we are fine with it.

Appreciate the feedback, advice and recommendations that everyone shared.