How to Lay Laminate Flooring: A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners

Laminate is one of the easiest floors to lay yourself: the boards click together without glue, and an average room is done in a day. This guide helps you avoid the typical beginner mistakes.

Tools and materials

Tools:

• Pull bar and tapping block (often sold as an installation kit)
• Rubber mallet
• Spacers
• Jigsaw or mitre saw (a laminate cutter works for cross-cuts)
• Folding rule, pencil, square
• Utility knife for the underlay

Materials:

• Laminate plus 5–10% for offcuts
• Underlay
• Vapour barrier (0.2 mm polyethylene sheet) on mineral subfloors like screed, unless built into the underlay
• Skirting boards and transition strips

How much laminate do I need?

Measure the floor area (length × width) and add 5–10% for offcuts, or 10–15% for rooms with many corners, recesses or diagonal laying.

Example: a 4.0 × 3.5 m room is 14 m². With 8% extra you need about 15.1 m². At 2.2 m² per pack, that’s 7 packs.

It’s better to buy one pack too many: many stores take back unopened packs, and matching boards can be hard to find later.

Step 1: Acclimatise the laminate

Store the closed packs flat in the room where you’ll lay them for at least 48 hours. The material adjusts to the temperature and humidity and moves less afterwards.

Step 2: Prepare the subfloor

The subfloor must be dry, clean, firm and level:

• Remove old carpet completely.
• Level out unevenness of more than about 2–3 mm per metre with levelling compound.
• On screed: lay a vapour barrier with about 20 cm overlap, turned up slightly at the walls.
• New screed must be fully dry; if in doubt, have the residual moisture measured.

Step 3: Lay the underlay

Roll out the underlay strip by strip across the direction you’ll lay the boards, edge to edge (not overlapping). Only lay as much as you’re about to cover.

Step 4: The first row

The first row determines the result:

1. Start in the left-hand corner along the longest straight wall.
2. The boards’ tongue faces the wall; with many systems you saw it off for a clean edge.
3. Place spacers so there’s an 8–10 mm expansion gap to the wall.
4. Use a string line to check the row is straight; walls are rarely perfectly straight.

Step 5: Lay the following rows

• Start each new row with the offcut from the previous one (at least about 30 cm long).
• End joints in neighbouring rows should be staggered by at least 30–40 cm.
• Angle each board into the groove of the previous row and fold it down; tap the short ends together with the tapping block and mallet.
• Pull the last board of each row into place with the pull bar.

Step 6: Last row, doors and heating pipes

• Last row: lay a board on top of the second-to-last row, mark the distance to the wall minus the expansion gap, and rip it to width.
• Door frames: trim the bottom of the frame using a board as a guide so the laminate slides underneath.
• Heating pipes: drill a hole about 15–20 mm wider than the pipe, cut the board through the hole, and glue the piece behind the pipe back in. Pipe collars hide the gap.

Step 7: Skirting boards and transitions

Remove the spacers and fix the skirting boards to the wall, not the floor; the floor must be able to move freely. Use a transition strip at thresholds and where the laminate meets other flooring.

Common mistakes

• No expansion gap: the floor buckles in summer.
• Laminate not acclimatised: joints open up or the floor lifts.
• Joints not staggered enough: looks busy and weakens the connection.
• Skirting screwed into the floor: blocks movement.
• Large rooms without an expansion joint: rooms longer than about 8–10 m (check the manufacturer’s instructions) need a movement joint within the floor.