Flooring – Starting row of laminate flooring

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Just wondering how to start the 1st row of laminate flooring.
I have a door to deal with right off the bat. Wondering which is the better option (see diagram). This diagram is not to scale. The wall is 20 feet long with a standard door opening.

DIAGRAM

Best Answer

In general, all tile and plank layout should be done to maximize the size of the pieces along both the starting wall and the finish wall. in general, unless you have at least 3/4 of a unit at the end wall, you wan to cut both the starting and ending rows to have a more balanced appearance. (Even with 3/4 of a full plank, you may still want to divide the difference for a more symmetrical appearance).

Assuming fairly square walls, you figure out the size of the edge strips as follows:

  1. Compute how many full units fit across the room.
  2. Compute the extra width beyond the full units.
  3. Add that to the width of a full unit.
  4. Divide by 2. This is the width of your starting row and finishing row. (Your full rows will be one less than the maximum total you first computed.)

Examples:

Room is 10'2" feet wide and tiles/planks are 1 foot wide:

 1. Maximum full units is 10
 2. Extra width is 2" 
 3. Extra plus one unit is 1'2" (14")
 4. Half of that is 7". (Starting and ending rows are 7" each, 9 full units in between)

and

Room is 10'10" wide and tiles/planks are 1 foot wide:

 1. Maximum full units is 10
 2. Extra width is 10"
 3. Extra plus one unit is 1'10" (22")
 4. Half of that is 11". (Starting and ending rows are 11" each, 9 full units in between.)

In general, flooring will be finished with a molding over a gap left around the perimeter (usually 1/4" to 3/8" depending on the flooring material). This gap is needed to accommodate shifting of the flooring materials due to seasonal shrinking and swelling.

The door transition needs to be adjusted to reflect the door saddle or other capping mechanism. A gap is needed at that transition as well as the wall edges. You could use either A or B if the door transition cover will give at least a 1/2" cover of the edge.