Herringbone Flooring in Coventry

The semi-detached houses of Cheylesmore, Binley and Styvechale have wider hallways than a terraced city offers, and the broader Oxford herringbone block reads as a woven surface there from the front door to the stairs; the finer block belongs in the narrow hall of an Earlsdon or Chapelfields terrace, where traffic through a narrow width is heavy and a brushed, oiled block hides the grit.

On the inter-war slab the base is flat once the membrane is checked, and the whole job is the setting out from the centre line, with the border planned before the field. In Earlsdon the blocks go on a plywood deck over levelled joists; at City Centre South the screed is heated and the engineered block is the construction to use. A diagonal pattern wastes more in the cutting than a plank floor, and the order allows for it.

With terraced houses at 40% of the Coventry stock, the Coventry 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.

Private renting is 25% of households in Coventry, and a herringbone in a rented home is chosen where the floor is part of the rent. The engineered blocks are refinished in place between tenancies; the rigid-vinyl herringbone is the version that takes a change of tenant without needing to be. In Coventry both are specified, for different ends of the market.