Herringbone Flooring – Parquet stripes for your special spaces!

What Is Herringbone Flooring?

As the name suggests, this is a type of parquet flooring with a fish bone-like structure.
Individual wood blocks are laid in a zigzag manner to create the pattern, producing a repeating visual effect. Due to its adaptability and classic looks, it’s a preferred style for modern homes and commercial spaces.

The pattern boasts a rich heritage. Its roots date to the 500 BC ancient Roman era when architects discovered roads lasted longer when the bricks arrangements matched the flow of traffic. (Just what did the Romans ever do for us eh?)
It wasn’t until the 16th century when the pattern made its way to wood flooring. During this time, such flooring was associated with nobility and only found in stately homes and houses of the wealthy around Europe. It was also very complicated and expensive to install – not the time to try keeping up with any early Jones’!

Fortunately, you don’t need to be royalty anymore to make a claim for herringbone flooring, modern herringbone is relatively affordable, and you don’t have to be a royal to install one in your home.
Different types of herringbone exist owing to its popularity.

Solid Hardwood Herringbone

The blend of hardwood’s luxuriousness with the beauty of the pattern oozes class regardless of its setting.
This style can be the most complex of all as the blocks come unfinished. During installation, you have first to stain, sand, and seal them. Solid oak is common, although other hardwoods such as mahogany, maple, and walnut are also popular.

As it leaves plenty of room for customisation, the style offers the chance to finish to your liking. You can also repaint and sand the flooring as much as you like. And just like wine, hardwood gets better with age.

However, this is the most expensive option and might not fit everyone’s budget.

Engineered Herringbone

Engineered flooring is relatively affordable and is perfect if you are on a slightly lower budget. As the boards come fully designed, they are less complicated to install.
The blocks offer increased design flexibility with the possibility of unique colour combinations as they come in a wide range of textures, colours, and finishes.

Vinyl Herringbone

Herringbone vinyl flooring offers an affordable and practical solution for those hoping to add a touch of elegance to their spaces. It comes in rolls, tiles, or planks that fit side to side, making it so easy for self-installation. It’s anti-slip, easy to maintain, moisture resistant, and extremely durable.

It’s also an excellent choice for bathrooms, laundry rooms, and kitchens.

Here at For the Floor & More, we can adapt our parquet patterns with your colours to customise a herringbone flooring that’s unique to your space & style. Whether it’s the shades of your walls or furnishings that you’d love to match or the size of the ‘planks’ to complement your theme, we are (almost) completely customisable and open to your ideas.
It is your home after all!

With the above herringbone flooring style – Geo: Osseo and Geo: Ossuto – we can use any two colours that will suit your space. Order the ‘standard’ colourway and pop your requests into the order message box. From there, we’ll create a new visual proof showing your shades.
Our guide to changing colours and scale is here.

Laminate Herringbone

Although similar to vinyl in appearance and method of installation, there are a few notable differences between the two. Laminate has a thicker composition comprised of wood, which makes it feel warm and slightly soft.

Due to its wood composition, it has a more ‘wooden’ vibe and is the preferred option among eco-conscious individuals. On the other hand, vinyl flooring tends to be relatively rigid and cold to touch. Although not immune to wear and tear, laminate herringbone flooring is superior in terms of fading and overall durability.

As both promise durability, affordability, and ease of maintenance, home, and business owners should evaluate their pros and cons before settling on either.

Why Use Herringbone Style Flooring?

Besides its incredible solidness, resistance to moisture, and hard-wearing power, the herringbone style is famous for its unique beauty and ability to fit in any space.

Traditionally, herringbone floors were preferred for large spaces because the engaging pattern made a room look small. Today, modern installations have found a way around this by blending shades, types of wood, as well as different effects like glossy and matte to add some depth.

Wherever used, herringbone flooring can be a real statement in any space.

Parquet Flooring Installation

We highly recommend hiring a professional installer to avoid ending up with unevenly matched blocks or bumps on your floor. The cost of installation will depend on the type of material, the thickness of the floor, desired finish, and the kind of hardwood.

But if you enjoy these kinds of things and want to go the old school route, by all means. It’s relatively easy to install after all, as engineered blocks fit using the tongue and groove technique- a fitting method allowing two flat pieces to combine into one.

If you’re looking for the easiest way to get the look, herringbone vinyl flooring supplied on a roll at up to 2.9m wide is definitely the simplest way by far.
There’s information here on how to order your new flooring, and once it’s arrived unroll it out, trim to fit, stand back and enjoy! The hardest part is picking which would work the best for your home.

Herringbone Vs. Chevron

When it comes to wooden flooring, two distinct patterns will often get mentioned – herringbone and chevron. And although the two may closely resemble each other, with a keen eye, they are definitely different animals.
While the herringbone flooring design creates a zigzag pattern, the chevron style uses blocks cut at an angle laid to form a central point-creating a ‘v-like’ pattern.

Due to its consistency, chevron results in a simple and cleaner look. The resulting pattern also makes smaller rooms look more spacious through an optical view.
The herringbone’s irregularity is what gives it a subtle yet sophisticated look.

Scroll down for more herringbone inspiration and our ideas on how and where to use.

Six Herringbone Pattern Ideas

Experiment with colours and sizes

When choosing the size of the planks, you can either go broad or narrow. Broad planks go well with contemporary settings, while the slim blocks are ideal for urban and industrial spaces.
You can also combine two or more colours or types of hardwoods for a pronounced difference in tone and contrast.

If you’re going down the herringbone vinyl flooring route, we can mock up different scales and colours and email over visual proofs before we even move to production. We can tweak and amend as needed once an order is on the system, and we only move to print once you’re 100% happy with the mockups.

Double herringbone

The double herringbone design pairs up two or three planks, creating a bolder and more visual effect. For an even stunning result, get creative by playing with the colours, finishes, grains, and hardwood species.

If you fall in love with the design, why not pair up with herringbone-patterned furniture or feature walls.

Herringbone vinyl flooring in your kitchen and bathroom

It’s best to opt for vinyl herringbone floors in areas with moisture and heat irregularities such as laundry rooms, bathrooms, and kitchens. Furthermore, at up to just under 3m wide and on a roll, its the easiest option to install and maintain.

If you still want to install solid wood in these areas, we recommend using engineered wood. Herringbone-designed ceramic tiles also offer an artistic yet practical substitute to hardwood flooring.

Herringbone hallways

Herringbone floors in entrances and hallways are now a common occurrence. Perhaps, it’s due to the welcoming effect the pattern’s dynamic movement alludes.
If your entranceway looks narrow and you would want it broader, no need to bring down the whole structure. Take advantage of the herringbone pattern to create the impression of a wider space.

Take your living room to a whole new level

Wood flooring can make a significant difference in living rooms and lounge areas. Combine it with modern furniture and equipment for a stunning contemporary look.

Are you tired of a dimly lit living area that seems always to dim your moods? Lightly-coloured wood like white oak will make the most of the little natural light streaming in and can even make the place look spacious.
Herringbone wood floorings also work best with bedroom spaces giving them a vintage feel and relaxing vibe.

Herringbone flooring x velvet upholstery

Velvet furniture on a ‘natural-looking’ floor offers the best blend of modernity and timelessness. Its glossy and sumptuous characteristics perfectly complement the natural wood’s tones. It’s like a beam of light pleasantly throwing a diffused glow over the room.

For a more elegant effect, we recommend opting for subtle colours like a soft blue or seal grey.

When it comes to interior décor, your style needs to dominate the space. After all, if you can’t fall in love with your home, how can you expect your guests and visitors to be suitably impressed with all your hard work?
With flooring trends leaning towards classic and vintage looks (plus a healthy dash of the bold & the colourful), herringbone flooring ticks all the boxes.

For more pattern inspo, we’ve got posts proclaiming passion for polka dot flooring, striped vinyl ideas, bold & colourful designs, and even a guide on how to change our designs to create something more unique to you!

Thanks again for spending the time with us and reading this post  – Joe