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5
out of5
Hard
The pattern is repetitive but requires precision and patience
About $12 per square foot
2 full days
Installing a herringbone floor elevates an ordinary room into one with elegance and character. While the process requires precision and patience, the payoff is well worth the effort for those willing to take on the challenge. In the video above, This Old House expert Charles Peterson demonstrates the intricate process of creating a herringbone inlay in an existing hardwood floor.
Gregory NemecThe herringbone pattern consists of rectangular wood pieces laid at a 45-degree angle, creating a zigzag effect that resembles herring fish bones. This design creates an illusion of more space while also being visually striking, making it particularly effective in smaller rooms.
While lovely, herringbone flooring is one of the more complex patterns to install. &#;This is the pattern that even the pros mess up,&#; says Peterson, author of Wood Flooring: A Complete Guide to Layout, Installation & Finishing. These are the main challenges:
Good preparation is key to successfully kickstarting your project.
To install a herringbone floor, you&#;ll need the following:
To start, snap a chalk line down the center of the room, along its length, then use a trammel to mark a perpendicular line. With the trammel&#;s point on one end of the centerline, draw a semicircle across it. From the other end, draw intersecting arcs, as shown. Use a straightedge to connect the points where the arcs intersect. Now, you can measure off of these perpendicular lines to create the rectangular field the herringbone will occupy.
Herringbone slats must be cut to a length that is an exact multiple of their width. Take these steps to determine the appropriate length:
For this project, we chose a 27-inch length to work with 3-inch-wide flooring.
Once you have your slat length, measure and mark one strip, with the tongue end as waste, and cut it with a miter saw. Use a rubber mallet to dry-fit the number of strips that equal the length of the test slat&#;nine in our case. Butt the tongue of the test slat into the panel&#;s end groove to make sure the slat&#;s ends are perfectly flush with the panel&#;s edges, as shown. If they&#;re not, size another piece and test it again.
When you&#;re satisfied with the slat length, set up a stop block and cut the remaining slats, making sure to chop off the tongue ends.
Tip: Sweep out any sawdust at the stop block after every cut, otherwise, the buildup will throw off all your efforts to make slats of a precisely equal length.
Herringbone slats need grooves in both ends to properly interlock. Use the groove of a slat to set the depth of the flooring router bit. Clamp one slat to a workbench and rout the cut end. Fit a tongue inside the new groove to check your work. If it&#;s OK, rout the rest of the slats.
You&#;ll need to draw parallel working lines on either side of the centerline to align the corners of each slat as you place it. Use a rafter square to mark a 45-degree angle from one corner of a slat, as shown, for your first working line. To get the distance to the second working line, draw a line from the opposite corner to intersect the first line. Now make a line from the intersection of the T, perpendicular to the edge of the slat. From that point on the edge, draw a line parallel with the top of the T to represent the centerline.
Place the slat so that the last line you drew is over the centerline, as shown. Make a mark at each corner of the slat at several intervals along the centerline. Use a straightedge to connect the marks and form two working lines.
Using a circular saw, cut the factory corner of a piece of 3/4-inch plywood into a right triangle with two sides matching the length of your slats. Mark the centerline of this blank and line it up on one of the working lines. Position the blank&#;s long edge on the top border of your field, and screw it to the subfloor. Route a groove along the blank&#;s two forward edges. The area occupied by the blank will be filled in with herringbone in a few steps.
Align the first slat with the side of the blank covering the centerline, tongue facing out. Lay the second slat along the other side of the blank, overlapping the end of the first, as shown, with its corners aligned with the working lines and the tongue facing out.
Position a flooring nailer against the tongue edge of the first slat. Strike the nailer with a mallet to drive nails every 5 inches along the slat. Check the alignment of the second slat, then nail it in place.
Install the third slat overlapping the end of the second slat, the fourth slat overlapping the end of third slat, and so on. Continue the pattern until the point of the chevron reaches the border. Unscrew the blank, reverse it, and place it against the tongue of the last slat laid, flush with its end. Screw it to the subfloor, as shown.
Butt the next slat against the blank, tongue out. Check for a tight joint, and nail it in place. Continue until the chevron reaches the opposite border. Keep adding slats until their ends reach the side borders.
You can&#;t nail into the groove of a slat, so you have to reverse the slats&#; direction to cover the areas left by the blank. To do that, you need a flooring spline, which allows you to butt two grooves together. Run a bead of wood glue in the groove of an installed slat, as shown. Insert the spline and nail it down like you would any other slat. Now work off that &#;tongue,&#; adding slats until the border of your field is covered.
Where the slats overlap the field&#;s borders, you&#;ll trim them to get a straight line. Use painter&#;s tape to mark a cutline, as shown. The tape will guard against splintering as you cut.
Screw a strip of molding or other material to a narrow length of plywood, place the fence of a circular saw against the strip, and rip the plywood to create a long-cutting guide for the saw. Line up the guide over the tape and, using spacers, screw it to the subfloor where it extends past the installed flooring. Set the circular saw on the guide, and adjust the depth of the blade to a hair more than the thickness of the slats. Trim the slats along the border, as shown. Do the same thing on the other three sides of the field.
Use the router to cut a groove around the perimeter so that you can add an apron of long flooring strips to frame the herringbone.
Run a bead of wood glue in the groove along one side of the herringbone field, insert a long spline, and tap the spline in place. Repeat for the other three sides. Now, install a decorative accent piece to define the edge of the field. We used 1 1/4-inch walnut.
For the next layer in the apron, measure and cut as you go to ensure a close fit. Use the nailer to install each strip so that it overlaps the end of the next, log-cabin style, in a frame around the field. Continue nailing border pieces until your apron is complete.
Once the primary installation steps are complete, it&#;s time to focus on the final touches.
If necessary, lightly sand the entire floor to remove any minor imperfections or surface irregularities. Use fine-grit sandpaper and work systematically across the floor. This step is particularly important if you used unfinished slats, as it will prepare the surface for staining and sealing.
If the flooring planks are unfinished, apply a stain to achieve your desired wood tone. Use a high-quality brush or stain applicator to apply the stain evenly, following the manufacturer&#;s instructions. Once the stain has dried, seal the floor with a durable topcoat to protect against wear and enhance the wood&#;s natural beauty. For prefinished flooring, a sealer may not be necessary, but a final buffing can boost the shine and overall look.
Carefully inspect the entire floor for any missed spots or inconsistencies. Use wood filler to address gaps or imperfections, and gently sand these areas. Do a final inspection to check that every detail meets your standards.
Your new herringbone floor requires consistent upkeep to keep it beautiful and long-lasting. Here are some tips.
Keep your floor free of dirt and debris by sweeping it regularly. Use a soft-bristle broom to avoid scratching the surface. Vacuuming with a hardwood floor attachment can also effectively remove dust and particles from between the slats.
Wood flooring is especially susceptible to moisture damage, which can cause warping or swelling. Place mats at entryways to reduce the amount of water tracked onto the floor. Wipe up spills immediately to stop moisture from seeping into the wood.
Place felt pads under furniture legs to prevent scratches when moving pieces across the floor. Use rugs in high-traffic areas to reduce wear and tear, and avoid wearing high-heeled shoes on the floor, as they can cause dents and scratches.
While installing herringbone floor yourself can be rewarding, hiring a professional has its advantages.
Professional installers have the experience and specialized tools to guarantee precise cuts and perfect alignment. They can handle the complexities of herringbone patterns and can deliver flawless results.
Installing a herringbone floor is time-consuming and requires extreme attention to detail. By hiring a pro, you can save time and avoid the frustration of troubleshooting potential issues.
Experts provide a level of quality assurance that&#;s hard to achieve with a DIY approach. Many offer warranties on their work, giving you peace of mind and protection against potential problems.
Installing a herringbone floor can transform a room. While it requires precision, patience, and specialized techniques, the result is a timeless and elegant flooring pattern. For an added touch of sophistication, consider installing a floor medallion; it should be carefully centered and aligned with the herringbone pattern to ensure a cohesive look. With careful planning and attention to detail, an experienced DIYer can achieve good results&#;but it may be helpful to have a professional on speed dial if you run into issues.
Herringbone is becoming more and more popular in the bigger cities we work in, including San Francisco. If you haven&#;t done a herringbone floor before, it can be a little intimidating, but really it&#;s just a precision puzzle. If you get the subfloor flat and are careful about snapping the correct lines and staying on those lines, it&#;s pretty straightforward. Here&#;s how we install, sand and finish herringbone floors.
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After my subfloor prep is complete (see the sidebar at the bottom of this article), my next step is to doublecheck the milling. (In these pics, I&#;m showing this on the already-installed floor, but I do this before I start a job and periodically as I&#;m installing.) If your milling is off, you will start to veer off your lines. On this particular job we had ordered chevron for the customer, but they changed their minds and ended up wanting herringbone instead, so we had to mill the chevron into herringbone, which is why this floor ended up being a very small herringbone&#;5 inches wide and 15 inches long. With herringbone, your length must be a multiple of the width, or your pattern won&#;t go together. It&#;s important to check the length and width, as well as the squareness of the board ends.
To figure out my lines, I need to find my control line, which is the dead center of my herringbone pattern between the left and right piece. To get that calculation I use a speed square on one of the boards to draw a 45-degree diagonal line (#2 in the photo below). Then I measure the distance between line #2 and the point (line #3 in this photo). On this floor that distance is 3½ inches. I divide that by 2 to calculate the distance (13/4 inch) to the center of the pattern, which is where my control line will be (line #1).
Now I want to look at my room and square it out, just like I do on any other hardwood floor, whether it&#;s a straight-lay or diagonal or herringbone. I snap my control line (my red line), then go ahead and measure over 1¾ inch on each side of that line to create my running lines (in blue). (For these pics I snapped the lines on top of the installed floor, not the subfloor, so you can see how the snapped lines align with my pattern.) The blue lines are the points of all the 90-degree angles on both left and right sides, which will tell me if I&#;m staying square as I lay the floor.
Next I want to make sure I&#;m staying on a 45-degree angle, so I run a speed square off line #1 to snap diagonal lines (the lines marked #4 and #5 in red above) onto the subfloor. Once I have that, I cut a piece of plywood that&#;s totally square and anchor that to my subfloor on the lines. That becomes my starting point&#;it&#;s my backer board where I start installing my right and left sides. (Here, I&#;m showing it on top of the installed floor, below.)
Using my backer board, I&#;ll run my right and left boards all the way up a row, checking the whole time that I&#;m on my running lines. When I get to the end of this row, I turn around and come back down toward where I started.
Once I get my running lines snapped, I capture my measurement between the running lines and the next row and basically transfer those lines over for each row, however large the room is. This way I know where my points need to be. I&#;m anchoring off the row I was just in, but I need to know where my floating side needs to be in order to make sure I&#;m square on the row after that.
Herringbones are usually grooved on three sides, on each butt end and on one side. It&#;s important to use spline to lock it in place any time the boards aren&#;t connected by a tongue and groove.
We glue our herringbone floors&#;we know there won&#;t be movement in the floor as we&#;re laying it, and it&#;s going to keep all of every single board tight to the subfloor. That&#;s particularly important to us here in the Bay Area, where we have many microclimates and fluctuations in temperature and humidity. You can see in these pics that we clean up the glue as we go&#;any glue that might set up and become an obstruction on the floor will just become a headache later on. We also spot-fill as we go, because the less there is for the client to notice, even this early in the job, the less likely they&#;ll be on their hands and knees looking at the floor for something to fix.
On this particular job we did a border, which made it easier because we didn&#;t have little pieces we had to cut on the edge of the wall. It was a 10-inch border of two 5-inch boards; here you can see I&#;m measuring out from the wall and snapping my lines for where the border will be. Then we used a track saw to cut the straight lines everywhere for the border.
Then we backfilled in the border; we routered in a groove on the herringbone field to make sure everything was interlocking. On this job, you can see the customer wanted mitered corners on the border.
The machines we have today make it much easier to get a completely flat floor and are particularly useful for multi-directional floors like herringbones. Because this was an engineered floor, I began sanding with 60-grit on the big machine (at a 45-degree angle) and edger, then 80-grit with both. Then I used 120 on the multi-head gear-driven system (top right). Sanding with a system like that really cuts down the high spots and brings everything flush with the low spots for a flat floor. Then I hand-scraped the corners and palm-sanded the inch that was left along the edges.
When coating a herringbone floor, I&#;ll generally go with the direction of the grain left to right. After that dries and I abrade, then I&#;ll go the opposite angle right to left. With each coat, I&#;m going with the direction of half the grain. Like with any job, especially a big space like this one, it&#;s important to create a plan about where you&#;re going to start and stop your finish. With the room placement on this job, in order to work our way out of the house, we had to stop coating in the middle of the floor, go to the opposite side and bring the finish to the same line, so we used a coating pad to coat to the edge of each board for a natural seam in the floor (above right). If we didn&#;t do that, we&#;d get what we call &#;burn marks,&#; which are little spots where the finish soaked in with the first application and gets darker when it&#;s coated over again, making what looks like a shadow. If you have to try to get them out later, they are a huge pain in the you-know-what. Everybody in our area wants the floor to look as raw as possible, and that was the case on this job, so we coated with Bona Natural Seal waterborne finish, abrading with a maroon pad between the first and second coats and a maroon pad with 240 abrasive between the second and third coats.
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