Installing vinyl flooring in a narrow environment (offset)

Hello everyone,

I want to cover a long but narrow room (1.40m wide x 14m long) with vinyl. I have bought vinyl, everything is fine. But: you’re supposed to lay laminate/vinyl according to the direction of the sun. In my case, that actually means laying the planks widthwise. However, the plank is about 1.2m wide, while the room is 1.40m wide. With the necessary 1 cm gap from each edge, I end up with about 18 cm width for the piece of the second plank in the offset (30 cm is the minimum suggested).

My question: should I actually lay it like that with the short pieces in the offset. Or should I ignore the tip about the sun direction (lots of windows there...) and lay it lengthwise? The only potential downside there is that the long narrow room might look even more narrow... Uff. And if I cut the planks to get a reasonable width for the individual pieces, I will have significant waste or use much more vinyl... uff uff..

But you surely have one or two good tips for me
Best regards,
KlyX

Hey,

As a rule, you usually start again with the cut piece from the last row at the front and then have hardly any waste.

Try drawing a few rows for yourself if you cut off 10/15/20/25/30 cm at the front of the first piece to be laid.

And if I split the boards to get a reasonable width for each piece, do I end up with a lot of solid leftovers or use much more vinyl... uff uff..

No, why?
120 cm divided into 60/40 gives two possibilities with 3x 40% and 2x 60% to reach 120% (144 cm). With six planks each, you would then have 6x 60% (making three rows) and 6x 40% (making two rows). If you now cut some planks into five parts, you get 5x 20% each, which you can use to balance (so you don't have two identical rows 40/40/40 following each other). This way, you can minimize waste (calculated with 144 cm width practically) to the possible divisions: 60/60, 20/100, 40/40/40, and 100/20 (note: percent, not cm!). You can figure out the switching rhythm yourself, it's Sunday now. Lunchtime - there's rice, baby (to quote Helge Schneider).

I would definitely lay it the other way around. It will not look so segmented.

Hello everyone,

thanks for your feedback.
: hope the lunch tasted good Your list made sense to me (after reading it 4 times) You are of course right, with percentage distribution it works quite easily.

The question that still arises for me now: what would be a good distribution in terms of variety? I am a noob when it comes to laying floors

So every row laid with 60,40,20 (so for 3 rows: 60,40,20/40,20,60/20,60,40) for the variety?

Or always 40,40,40/60,60/60,40,20
What looks nicest to the eye?

Thanks
KlyX

So lay each row with 60,40,20 (so for 3 rows: 60,40,20/40,20,60/20,60,40) for variety?

No, that would be nonsense, as you would often have two joints directly on top of each other in consecutive rows. With 20/100 - 40/40/40 - 60/60 - 80/40 - 100/20 and then again you would have it regularly. Of six planks, two were uncut, two split 60/40, one split 80/20, and one 40/40/20. This way you always have a "brick bond" with regard to the joints. Whoever solved this math problem is fit for fifth grade. Your calculation was basically not correct: you would come to 100% in each row, but your room is 116.66% of 120 cm plank length wide. Therefore, I based it on 120%, then you have only 4cm waste per row. With the Bavarian high school diploma this should actually work without any problems, but that is too complicated for me on Sundays.