Herringbone Flooring in Sheffield

A stone-fronted terrace in Crookes or Walkley has a hall that runs straight from the door to the stairs, and herringbone laid along it gives that corridor a direction; the finer Oxford block suits the width, and the broader block fills an Ecclesall or Nether Edge reception room. Either is set out from a centre line, because a wall that looks square in a Victorian Sheffield house very often is not.

Over the post-war slab of a Gleadless or Hillsborough semi the base is flat for free once the membrane checks out, and the work is the setting out; over pre-war joists the plywood deck over the levelling is where the pattern is won or lost. Over the heated screed at Attercliffe Waterside the engineered block is the construction to use. The order allows for the higher cutting waste a diagonal layout creates.

Semi-detached houses are 38% of the homes in Sheffield, 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 26% of the Sheffield stock, the Sheffield 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.