Herringbone Flooring in Nottingham

In a bay-fronted Edwardian room in West Bridgford or Mapperley Park the direction of a herringbone floor is chosen with the window: laid towards the light the pattern reads as a surface, laid across it the blocks throw small shadows and the floor looks busy. The broader Oxford block suits those rooms; the finer block suits the hall of a Sherwood terrace, where the pattern runs from the door to the stairs.

The centre line is marked out before the first block, because the walls of a Victorian Nottingham house are rarely square to each other, and the base is a plywood deck over levelled joists or a checked inter-war slab. At Trent Bridge Quays 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 does, and the order allows for it.

Semi-detached houses are 33% of the homes in Nottingham, 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 27% of the Nottingham stock, the Nottingham 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.