Herringbone Flooring in Cardiff

The tiled vestibule that so many Roath and Canton terraces keep inside the front door sets a geometry, and a herringbone hall laid from that threshold to the stairs continues it in oak. The finer Oxford block matches the width of the hall; the broader block is for the Pontcanna reception room with the bay. The centre line of the hall is marked before the first block, so the cuts at the two skirtings match.

Welsh rain arrives on CF11 doorsteps for most of the year, and a brushed, oiled block hides the grit it brings in better than a smooth lacquer does. Over levelled boards the blocks are glued to a plywood deck; over Plasdwr’s heated screed the engineered block is the construction to use, because solid blocks gap over heat. The blocks sit in the house before they meet the adhesive, and the order allows for a diagonal pattern’s waste.

Semi-detached houses are 30% of the homes in Cardiff, and in a semi the herringbone usually goes into the living room, often a knocked-through one. A pattern gives a long room a centre; set it out from the middle, and where the timber front floor meets the concrete extension the two are levelled to each other before the first block, because a glued pattern records every step in the base.

With terraced houses at 30% of the Cardiff stock, the Cardiff hallway is a narrow one, and that is the room herringbone was made for: the diagonal pattern draws the eye along the length and the hall reads wider than it is. The smaller 90 x 450 mm block keeps the pattern in proportion. Over a suspended timber floor the blocks are glued to a ply overlay; the rigid-vinyl herringbone clicks together over an underlay and needs no glue.