How to Install Laminate or Rigid Core Floating Floors

Why this matters

A floating floor is held down by nothing but its own weight and its joints. That is what makes it fast, and it is why the two things that kill it are both invisible on install day: a joint that looked closed but never locked, and a spot where the floor is pinned so it cannot move. The first opens into a gap in a few weeks. The second peaks or buckles the first time the house goes from dry to humid. Both are cheap to prevent and expensive to fix, because fixing either means taking up every row between the problem and the nearest wall.

Start state: what has to be true before the first plank

• Flat subfloor to the maker's tolerance. Floating planks bridge low spots and rock on high ones, and a rocking plank works its joint loose. See related: Floor Flatness Tolerances by Floor Type.
• Underlayment chosen and down. Which pad, whether the plank has one attached, and when a separate vapor retarder goes over concrete are owned by Underlayments and Vapor Retarders Under Floating Floors. Do not double a pad under a plank with one attached unless the maker allows it; a soft double layer lets the joints flex and break.
• Planks ready. Acclimated where the maker calls for it, with the HVAC running (see related: How to Acclimate Flooring and Confirm It Is Ready). Rigid core makers vary, from no stated time to 48 hours or more; the sheet says.
• Door casings undercut so planks slide under (see related: How to Undercut Door Jambs and Casing).
• The starting line snapped with the last row balanced (see related: How to Lay Out a Starting Line for a Plank Floor).
• The maker's sheet in hand, open at three numbers: the expansion space, the minimum end-joint stagger and end piece length, and the largest run allowed before an expansion break.

The job these steps follow

A living room 24 ft by 16 ft with a kitchen peninsula off one long wall at the end away from the hall, opening through a 36-inch doorway into a hall 14 ft long. Rigid core click planks, 7 inches by 48 inches, with an attached pad, over a plywood subfloor. Planks run the 24 ft direction and carry on straight down the hall. This job's sheet reads: 5/16 inch expansion at every fixed object; end joints at least 8 inches apart row to row and no end piece under 8 inches; a break required at every doorway and wherever a run exceeds 40 ft.

Step 1: Map every fixed object before the first row

Walk the room and list every place the floor will meet something that does not move with it: walls, the peninsula's cabinet base, the hall door casings, two radiator pipes, the fireplace hearth, a floor register, the stair nosing at the hall end.

Why: each one gets the expansion space. A floating floor moves as one sheet, and it only needs to touch one fixed thing hard to push against it. The peninsula is the classic: the floor runs around three sides of it, and a plank cut tight to the cabinet base locks the whole kitchen end in place.

Never put a cabinet, island, peninsula or permanent fixture on top of a floating floor, and never drive a fastener through it: no nailed shoe, no screwed door stop, no transition screwed through the plank. Each one is a pin. In this job the peninsula was already set, so the floor runs to it with the gap and quarter round fixed to the cabinet base, not the floor.

Step 2: Plan the breaks

Total straight run along the planks: 24 ft of living room plus 14 ft of hall is 38 ft, under the 40 ft limit. That alone would allow one continuous floor. The sheet still requires a break at every doorway, so the floor stops at the hall doorway with a T-molding over a gap, and the hall becomes its own floor.

 PLAN, not to scale              plank run --->
 +----------------------------------+
 | LIVING 24 ft x 16 ft             |
 | hearth: gap 5/16 at its edge     +----------------+
 |                                  T  HALL 14 ft    |
 |                                  T  36 in opening |
 |  +--------+                      +----------------+
 |  | PENIN- |  gap 5/16, quarter   |
 |  | SULA   |  round on cabinet    |
 +--+--------+----------------------+
 T = T-molding over the doorway gap, track on subfloor
 every edge shown: 5/16 in gap, covered, nothing pinned

What breaks if skipped: a floor run continuously through a doorway against the sheet works as a single sheet through a pinch point. The doorway is where it peaks.

Step 3: Lay the first row off the line

Set the first row with its tongue or locking edge facing into the room as the maker shows, spacers at the wall, the edge exactly on the chalk line. Click its ends together and check it against the line every 4 ft. Spacers stay until the last row is in and checked; they come out before the base goes on.

Step 4: Lock each plank in the order its profile requires

The order matters: most fold-down and drop-lock profiles angle the long edge in first and seat the end as the plank comes down, while some angle-angle profiles engage the end first. How each profile locks (angle-angle, drop-lock, fold-down) and how to tell a seated joint from one that only looks closed is in Click-Lock Flooring Joints: Angle, Drop and Fold; do not improvise a method the profile was not made for.

In general:

1. Engage the new plank's long edge and end in the order the profile requires.
2. Press it down until it lies flat with no lip.
3. Run a hand along the joint. A seated long joint is flat and tight end to end. A ridge, a hairline that widens toward one end, or a plank that springs back up when you lift your hand is not locked.

Where the profile calls for a tapping block, tap it lightly against the block, never directly on the edge. A crushed locking lip holds nothing.

In the living room row 6 looked closed, but the hand check found a lip at the third plank. Row 7 had already been started, so the crew lifted rows 7 and 6 back to the problem plank (see related: How to Lift and Relay a Click-Lock Floating Floor), cleaned a crumb of debris out of the groove, and relaid. Ten minutes. Found after row 20, it would have been an hour.

Step 5: Stagger the ends to the maker's minimum

Start each row with the offcut from the row before if it is at least the minimum end piece length (8 inches on this sheet) and it puts the end joints at least the minimum apart (8 inches here). Otherwise start with a fresh plank cut to length.

Why: staggered ends spread the weak points so no line of joints acts as a hinge. The H pattern (end joints aligned two rows apart) is a looks problem on hardwood; on a floating floor it is also a structural one.

Hazard: cutting rigid core with a saw throws fine mineral and plastic dust; score and snap with a utility knife where the plank allows it, and use dust collection and eye protection for saw cuts. Laminate's fiberboard core cut with a saw produces wood dust; cut outside or with collection, and where respirators are required, wear them under a written program per 29 CFR 1910.134 (applied to construction work by 29 CFR 1926.103).

Step 6: Fit around every fixed object with the gap

• Pipes: drill a hole the pipe diameter plus twice the expansion space, rip the plank through the hole's center line, set both pieces, and glue the cut-out piece back to itself only, never to the subfloor. Cover with a pipe ring.
• Hearth and stair nosing: stop short by the gap and cover with the trim the maker supplies, fixed to the hearth or stair, not the floor.
• Register: cut the opening with the gap and set the register so its flange rests on the floor without being screwed to it.
• Peninsula: the gap at the cabinet base, quarter round nailed into the cabinet base.

Step 7: Finish the last row and the doorway, then trim

The last row and door jambs are covered in How to Fit the Last Row and Door Jambs When Floating. At the hall doorway, set the T-molding track to the subfloor in the gap between the two floors, not through either floor, so both floors move under its wings. Pull the spacers, then install base or shoe nailed into the wall only (see related: How to Install Baseboard and Shoe Over a New Floor).

How to verify you got this right

• Every joint flat. Stand and look across the floor toward the window in normal light, then walk it. No raised edges, no hairlines, no plank that clicks or springs underfoot.
• The floor moves. Push a thin putty knife into the gap at the walls, peninsula, hearth and doorway. It enters everywhere, about the 5/16 inch the sheet calls for; at a spot where it will not go in, something is pinned.
• No fastener in the floor. Check shoe, door stops, transitions and the register. A single nail through the floor is a pin.
• Stagger. Spot-check five places: no end joints closer than 8 inches row to row on this job, and no piece under 8 inches.

What changes the call

• Runs over the maker's limit need a break in the middle of a room, not just at doorways, usually a T-molding across the run. Some sheets allow longer runs for certain rigid core products; read yours.
• Sunrooms and rooms with big glass. Many sheets restrict installation where sun heats the floor, or call for window treatments. See related: The Floating Floor That Buckled in the Sunroom.
• Glue-assisted installs. A few sheets allow or require adhesive in high-moisture areas; that floor is no longer floating where it is glued, and its expansion rules change.

References

• The flooring maker's installation instructions (expansion space, stagger, run limits, break locations)
• 29 CFR 1910.134, respiratory protection, where respirators are worn (29 CFR 1926.103 applies it to construction)
• See related: Click-Lock Flooring Joints: Angle, Drop and Fold
• See related: Underlayments and Vapor Retarders Under Floating Floors
• See related: The Laminate That Peaked at the Kitchen Island