Diagonal laminate flooring: styling tricks and nuances

Recommendation points

• How to calculate the amount of laminate flooring for diagonal installation
• Required materials and tools
• We start to lay the laminate

The popularity of laminate flooring has led to the fact that it has become quite difficult to achieve uniqueness from the appearance of the floor using laminate flooring. This article will show you how to achieve this without using expensive laminate options. It’s about diagonal styling.

Laminate is one of the most popular floor coverings today. A wide range of textures and colors allows you to create a floor that is unique in appearance. However, laminate with a unique texture is quite expensive. But you can diversify the look of your floor not only by choosing a laminate with different color-texture solutions, but also to lay it differently from how it is usually done. For example, diagonally.

Before installing laminate flooring, you need to buy it. For a classic installation scheme, the calculation of the required amount is trivial – we just take the total area of ​​the room and divide it by the area of ​​one floorboard. We round up and get the required number of boards. Such simplicity of calculations is due to the fact that laminate is a waste-free product. To understand why, just look at the picture:

First row: we lay a whole number of floorboards, saw off the necessary piece from the last.

Second row: take the sawn-off piece and put it first in the second row (the lock on the board remains on the right – we need it to dock with the next floorboards in the row), then we lay the rest of the whole floorboards (as needed), saw off the necessary piece from the last one.

Third row: take the sawn-off piece and put it at the beginning of the row, and so on.

How to calculate the amount of laminate flooring for diagonal installation

It’s pretty simple. Look at the picture:

Everything is exactly the same, except that we need to saw off two triangular pieces. It can be seen from the figure that the area of ​​the required laminate increases precisely by the total area of ​​these pieces – two on each side in each row. Obviously, when laid at 45 °, if you put the two pieces together, you get a square with sides equal to the width of one board. Moving diagonally from the corner AND, we will reach the corner FROM. At this stage, there will be residues, in total for each row equal to a square with sides equal to the width of the laminate.

Starting from the corner FROM, the floorboards in the rows will be sawn off at the same angle and in the same direction as needed for the leftmost pieces of the floorboards, i.e. there will be no residue. It will be that way until we reach the corner IN. After passing through it, remnants will again appear on each side, in total for each row equal to a square with sides equal to the width of the laminate. Thus, the total area of ​​the required laminate will be equal to the area of ​​the room plus the total area of ​​all squares, and this, in turn, is equal to the square of the width of one floorboard multiplied by the number of rows where the remnants will be.

It remains to calculate the number of rows. The sought value is X1 + X2 on the picture:

Remembering geometry. Triangles SAE and BDF – are equal and both are rectangular equilateral, therefore:

• X1 + X2 = the diagonal of the square with sides AC ;
• or: X1 + X2 = AC * 1.42 (1.42 Is the square root of 2);
• Number of rows = (X1 + X2) / width of one floorboard;
• or: Number of rows = (AC * 1.42) / width of one floorboard.

As stated above: Total area of ​​squares = (width of one floorboard)² * number of rows.

Or after substitution and shorthand: Total area of ​​squares = width of one floorboard * (AC * 1.42).

Thus:

• Number of floorboards = (total laminate area + total squares area) / area of ​​one floorboard;
• or: Number of floorboards = ((AC * CD) + (width of one floorboard * (AC * 1.42))) / area of ​​one floorboard.

Example: we have a room of 6×9 meters. The width of the floorboards is 0.1 m, the length is 1 m. How many boards are needed?

Number of floorboards = (6 * 9) + (0.1 * 6 * 1.42) / (1 * 0.1) = 548.5, that is 549 floorboards.

Likewise, you can derive a formula for calculating laminate flooring at any angle other than 45 °. But, since the amount of waste will increase in this case, it makes sense to lay the laminate along the diagonal of the room exactly at an angle of 45 °.

Required materials and tools

We decided on the amount of laminate, you can start laying. For this you still need:

1. Substrate. The total area is equal to the area of ​​the room. You can use rolled, or you can use a backing sheet.
2. Hacksaw or jigsaw with a fine tooth.
3. A hammer or rubber mallet.
4. Joiner’s square.
5. Roulette.
6. Pencil
7. Scotch.
8. Wallpaper (stationery) knife.

We start to lay the laminate

1. Carefully clean (sweep and vacuum the floor).

2. Laying the substrate. For rolled – we roll it along the room in strips, for sheet – we lay with a break in the seams. We glue the seams with tape. Cut off the excess with a wallpaper knife.

3. Laying laminate flooring diagonally should start from the corner of the room. We carefully go around the pipes of the heating batteries.

4. Since the laminate should not be installed end-to-end against the wall, either special wedges are required or floorboard trims can be used. Their thickness is just enough to provide the required clearance..

5. Cutting the sheets is done either in a square at 45 °, or we make a template at 45 °. The first few rows will be from one floorboard. Each row is a trapezoid. Its upper side is equal to the length of the lower side of the previous row. We measure the required values ​​with a tape measure, mark with a pencil and a square (or a template) on the floorboard the required cutting lines and cut off with a jigsaw (or a hacksaw). When rows of several floorboards go, we connect everything in a row (having previously sawed off the desired angle from the extreme left), we engage the resulting row with the previous one (this is a temporary connection, so you should not be zealous, trying to achieve a tight connection) and measure the length of the residual piece with a tape measure (from do not forget to retreat to the thickness of the wedge).

6. We measure this distance on the next floorboard, mark and cut.

7. We remove the entire row from engagement with the previous one, attach the resulting piece to it and finally connect it to the already finished floor plane. If necessary, tap the row with a hammer through the cut of the laminate for a perfect seal.

8. So, row by row we go to the corner of the room.

9. We reach the corner. There it is necessary to change the cutting direction of the left corner of the floorboard. Otherwise, all actions are similar to the previous ones..

10. At the end there will be a small piece in the opposite starting corner. We mark it up and carefully insert it into place.

11. As a result, we will get an unusual floor from the simplest, banal laminate.

Thus, sometimes it is not at all necessary to buy expensive building materials, it is enough to use simpler non-standard materials and the result can become beautiful and unique..