Best Flooring for Living Rooms
Engineered oak, herringbone, laminate or rigid vinyl for the room you sit in most: wear layers, sound, underfloor heating limits, and the counts in the range.
The living room is the room a floor is chosen for and the one it is judged in: the biggest single area in most houses, the one with the window, the sofa that is pushed back, the fire, the door to the garden, and the most hours of anyone sitting on it or near it. It is also the room with the fewest technical constraints, no standing water, no front door, no cooker, which is why the choice comes down to what the floor is made of and how it will age. This guide sets out the four floors the range offers for it, what decides between them, and the numbers behind each.
On this page
- What a living room asks of a floor
- Engineered oak: the floor most living rooms end up with
- Herringbone: the pattern floor
- Laminate: the floor for the budget and the traffic
- Rigid vinyl: the floor that runs through
- Sound
- Underfloor heating
- Which one
- Common questions
- What the published standards say
- Who publishes this guide
What a living room asks of a floor
Under EN ISO 10874 floor coverings are classified by area and intensity of use, with classes 21, 22 and 23 for domestic use at moderate, general and heavy intensity. A living room sits at the general-to-heavy end of that domestic range, with chairs moved daily and a route worn from one door to the other. It does not get wet in the way a kitchen does, so the water question that decides those rooms does not arise here, and the floors that are excluded elsewhere, laminate above all, are in play.
What does arise: sound, because a hard floor in a large room with a high ceiling echoes; warmth underfoot, which is partly the material and partly whether there is underfloor heating; how the floor takes a wide bay or a chimney breast; and how it looks after ten years of the same chair on the same spot.
Engineered oak: the floor most living rooms end up with
The 33 engineered oak boards in the range are multi-layer parquet elements under EN 13489, an oak wear layer over a cross-bonded core. The wear layer is 3 mm on 27 of them, 4 mm on four and 6 mm on two; the widths run from 125 mm and 150 mm through 190 mm to 220 mm, and the thicknesses are 14, 15 and 20 mm. Every one is listed as compatible with underfloor heating, and the manufacturer's warranty is 15 years on 31 and 20 years on two. The wear layer decides how many times the floor can be sanded, and the only sourced figure on that is a manufacturer's, Kährs, at up to four times depending on its thickness. In a living room that is the number to buy on: the thicker the layer, the more of the floor's life can be spent being refinished rather than replaced.
Width is a room decision. A 220 mm board in a large room with a bay reads as fewer, calmer lines; a 125 mm board in the same room reads busier, and in a small room the reverse holds. The wide or narrow guide sets it out. Finish is a life decision: oil is repaired in patches, lacquer is refinished whole, and the oiled or lacquered guide is where that is settled.
Herringbone: the pattern floor
Herringbone is laid from rectangular blocks with square-cut ends, set at right angles and staggered so the end of one meets the side of the next, and it is the floor of the Edwardian front room for a reason: in a large room with a fireplace the pattern gives the eye somewhere to go. The range carries it in engineered oak, ten Oxford herringbone floors with a 3 mm wear layer in 90 by 450 mm and 125 by 600 mm blocks, and in rigid vinyl, eight SPC herringbone floors at 6.5 mm with a 0.55 mm wear layer. The herringbone collection page puts all eighteen side by side. One number changes with the pattern: Havwoods advises 15 to 20 per cent waste for herringbone or chevron against 8 to 12 per cent for planks, because every block at the edge is a cut.
Laminate: the floor for the budget and the traffic
A living room is where laminate makes sense, because the water objection that rules it out of a kitchen or bathroom does not apply. The 5 laminate herringbone blocks share one specification: 12 mm HDF, 100 by 600 mm, click joint, abrasion class AC4 under EN 13329, 1.92 m² a box, listed as compatible with underfloor heating and carrying a 15-year manufacturer's warranty. AC4 is a surface that resists the chair-and-grit wear of a living room for a long time; what laminate cannot do is be sanded, so the floor's life is the surface's life. The AC rating guide and the LVT against laminate guide cover the trade.
Rigid vinyl: the floor that runs through
Where the living room opens into a kitchen, or where one floor is wanted from the front door to the back, the 36 rigid vinyl floors are the material that can do it, because they are the ones listed as waterproof for the rooms that need it. The wear layer is 0.55 mm on 24 and 0.3 mm on twelve; EN ISO 10582, the standard for heterogeneous PVC floor coverings, does not tie a wear layer thickness to its classes, so the class number on the datasheet describes where the floor is fit to be used, not how thick its surface is. Every one is click-fitted, listed as compatible with underfloor heating, comes with its underlay backing included, and carries a 25-year warranty. In a living room on its own, rigid vinyl is chosen for the open-plan run rather than for anything the room itself demands.
Sound
A hard floor in a big room is loud, and the underlay is where that is addressed. For underlays under laminate EN 16354 sets the test methods, and the EPLF's bulletin says an underlay's impact sound value, ISLam, should be at least 14 dB, tested with the reference floor covering the standard describes; any higher figure on a datasheet is that manufacturer's own declaration. The figure is about impact sound passing through the floor to the room below, which matters in a flat, rather than the echo within the room, which is answered by rugs and furniture. The underlay guide and the flats guide take each further.
Underfloor heating
EN 1264 caps the floor surface temperature at 29 °C in the occupied area, 35 °C in the edge zone and 33 °C in bathrooms, and floor coverings over a warm-water system are normally limited to a thermal resistance of 0.15 m²K/W, the figure also used as the worst case for dimensioning a system in a dwelling. All four floors above are listed as compatible; the difference between them is thermal resistance, which is a matter of thickness and material, and a 20 mm oak board sits further from the pipes than a 5.2 mm vinyl one. The underfloor heating guide does the arithmetic.
Which one
Common questions
Is laminate a reasonable choice for a living room?
Yes. The water objection that rules laminate out of bathrooms and laundry rooms under EN 13329 does not apply to a living room, and the AC4 surface on the boards in the range is made for the chair-and-grit wear the room produces. What laminate cannot do is be sanded.
Which wear layer should I buy for a living room?
The one that matches how long you expect to keep the floor. Twenty-seven of the 33 engineered boards carry 3 mm, four carry 4 mm and two carry 6 mm; the only sourced figure on sanding is a manufacturer's, up to four times depending on thickness.
Does a living room floor need an acoustic underlay?
In a flat, yes, because the impact sound figure is about the room below. In a house the echo within the room is a matter of rugs and furniture rather than the underlay. The EPLF's minimum for an underlay under laminate is an ISLam of at least 14 dB.
Can all of these go over underfloor heating?
Every engineered oak, laminate and rigid vinyl floor in the range is listed as compatible. The system's designer works to a covering thermal resistance of 0.15 m²K/W and a surface temperature of 29 °C in the occupied area under EN 1264.
How much extra should I order for a herringbone living room?
Havwoods advises 15 to 20 per cent waste for herringbone or chevron against 8 to 12 per cent for plank floors, because every block at the edge of the room is a cut. A large square room wastes less than a small room with a bay.
A Victorian front room and a 1970s through-lounge ask different things of a floor, and which one a town is full of is on the census. Browse by town and region.
What the published standards say
Who publishes this guide
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