Do You Have to Stagger the End Joints for Hardwood Floors?

Staggering Improves Floor Stability

• The tongue-and-groove construction of hardwood flooring allows the installer to nail each board from one side only, because the other side is held in place by the board next to it. If a board begins to warp, though, the end is the most likely part to be affected, and one nail may not be enough to prevent it from curling upward. When two adjacent ends are aligned, this curling affects both of them; when the ends are staggered, the boards on either side of the affected one hold the end down.

Floor Appearance

• Because the lines between adjacent boards run parallel to the grain, they don't have much visual impact. Lines that run across the grain interrupt it. The perpendicular line formed by two or more boards installed with their ends adjacent to one other creates the impression of a separate section distinct from the rest of the floor. The effect increases with the length of the line and the number of such lines on the floor.

Staggering Recommendations

• Flooring professionals recommend staggering floorboards, although not all recommend the same staggering interval. Shaw Floors, for example, advises a 12- to 24-inch interval, while the National Wood Flooring Association recommends 6 to 10 inches, depending on the width of the planks. Work to avoid regularity in the staggering pattern, such as a H-pattern formed by recurring end joints in courses two or three boards away from one other. Regularly recurring end joints are relatively easy to avoid when installing random-length boards, but more care is needed when installing boards all of the same length.

Staggering Uniform-Length Floorboards

• Random-length floorboards give an installer the flexibility to choose boards to make a natural stagger pattern, but when the boards are all the same length, some cutting is necessary. You can't cut boards that go in the middle of the floor without milling the cut end with a new tongue or groove. You can cut the first board in each course, however, because the cut end butts against the wall. Most installers use the off-cut from the last board in the previous course to begin each course, but if that isn't suitably random, you can always cut the first board in each course individually.