As we grow up, and even as adults, we practice looking for patterns. We do it playing games such as connect four or tic tac toe. Younger and older children now may do it on smart devices playing games such as Candy Crush. Looking how things connect. When a professional or a good homeowner installs a plank floor, there should be nothing that catches the eyes.
The picture below is a good example of how to not install a wood floor. The end joints should never line up to make it look like a brick pattern. That would be something that would catch your eye when going into a home or building.
The joints in a wood floor should always be in a random form. Whether it is a real wood floor or a faux wood floor, once you start to see a pattern you will continue to look for more. It will draw your attention away from the colors and how nice the product looks. The term controlled chaos is used because true chaos has no pattern. You have to install it, so you have control over how it will turn out.
Something that helps is take your time when installing the flooring. Rushing to put it down always leads to mistakes and they can be costly when dealing with wood flooring. When installing wood flooring, many times there will be some varies sizes of planks. Sand and finish products tend to have the most variation of lengths. Pre-finished wood most of the time is more limited. In those cases, when you start a row you need to make random start lengths that vary in no set pattern.
When dealing with laminate and vinyl, you will need to be aware of starting with different lengths on each row. This will allow for the area of the floor to look random. If you are not sure when you are doing the installation, stand up every so often and take a look at your work. When you stand back, you will be able to detect a pattern if there is one. If you have multiple installers working on the floor, have one of them watching as the floor is going down to make sure end joints are not lining up. This can be the one suppling the flooring to the others so he can keep an eye on it as they are putting it down. He may also be able to make the starting cuts to the row to keep the random chaos going.
No matter which plank flooring you are installing, it is important to do it right. A poor job that has patterns in it will always take away from the beauty of the floor to just looking for the lines. True chaos takes work to do, but the job looks so much better when you get that totally random look and all you see the beautiful floor that has just been installed.
