Floating wooden flooring: an alternative laying type to gluing

Beautiful to look at and pleasant to live with, flooring made of wooden planks gives the house a feeling of warmth. The means for laying the wooden flooring involve the planks being glued to the screed (the most common), screwed or nailed, or else floating. The “floating” technique of laying requires the floorboard to be interlocked and positioned on an underlayment, sheath, non-woven fabric or cork.

As the name suggests, floating boards consists in leaving the wooden flooring separate from the support on which it rests – the boards “float” so they can expand and shrink freely. Floating floorboards consists of a single wooden layer simply “resting” on the laying surface. For this reason, it is a common method utilised in renovations when laying over an existing floor, for rented premises and in order not to damage the existing flooring. In the event of further renovations, it is then possible to remove the floorboards and restore the previous flooring. This is also the case if you plan to disassemble the wooden floor only to reuse it, for example, if you are renting or moving house. It is thus possible to lay the new planks over existing boards. The planks can be glued onto tiled flooring or a concrete screed or even onto heat insulation panels/surfaces after having placed underlayment or film that acts as a vapour barrier.

The floating method of laying the wooden flooring certainly requires greater precautions and care – unlike the glued technique – such as a study of expansion joints in medium-to-large spaces or in the passage points between rooms or between different types of flooring. Furthermore, ensuring the floating installation of well-structured planks such as those of Cadorin becomes an obligatory choice.

With proper installation, Cadorin three-layer planks are suitable for all the most common types of laying, including with the floating method.

Unlike the single-layer or light structures, three-layer planks drastically attenuate the natural movements of the wood, ensuring maximum stability and evenness over time.

If you want to learn more and have useful tips for installation, visit the page “Installation and Useful Tips”.

To learn more and receive further information about how Cadorin planks are made, simply visit the page “Technical Plank Explanations”.