1) I can't advise.

2) I think vertical. I have always heard that it is best to run in the direction that is longest. Don't know where I heard it though.

I too have heard that it's always best to run it the longest direction.

Thanks for your votes, jdez and cpartist. Vertical works well in all rooms but the old 3 foot hallway that is to the left after the foyer stairs.

Carol

So, the short hallway might look sort of like this

I don't even notice it now that we've been living with it for a while.

By unlevel, do you mean it's actually not level, or that it is on a different plane than the new subfloor? If you need to make it thicker, add a 1/4" underlayment. If it's not level or sags, use a leveling compound.

You can change the direction of your flooring. Our house is all going to run the same except the foyer and main hallway. I might use a wider/different piece as a sill of sorts to define the change of direction.

Last house we had an even narrower hallway than jdez. It always had a runner rug anyhow but it was fine. It's bound to happen when you lay floor in a large space that flows from room to room. The halls or connecting spaces will end up with shorter planks.

Most flooring experts (and you should speak with your installer) recommend laying hardwood perpendicular to the floor joists especially if you have a 1/2 subfloor.

We finished our home 2 years ago and ran our hardwood perpendicular to the joists even though we had 3/4" tongue and groove subfloor that was glued and screwed.

Recommended Hardwood Installl

Thanks for all the helpful comments!

jdez: Thanks for the visual. Your hallway looks good. How wide is it?

Mushcreek: Yes the old subfloor is actually not level (sags somewhat). It is not on a different plane than the new subfloor. So with a leveling compound does it get spread throughout the area taking a bit of height away everywhere, or just in the low points? Have you used one before under hardwood? I was hoping DH could do the hardwood room by room (or section by section) as we are living in the house and can't find a way to clear the whole main level at once. The idea of changing the direction for that hallway is a creative idea that I will explore further. I will see what Houzz pics I can find to give me a visual there.

Autumn: your reasoning makes sense, and glad you thought it looked fine in your old house. We don't plan on a runner (trying not to thicken up the floor anymore due to infloor heat that is stapled under the subfloor).

summers: Thanks for the link. I will go explore it next. The joist below this floor actually run in different directions. The majority of the joists run horizontally so that would support a vertical arrangement. However the bedroom and the living room at front of house have the joists run vertically. Under the old house they were not proper i-joist just 2 X 8s spaced 14 inches on centre. Some of them have bracing in between and we plan to place more bracing in between these joists.

DH is installing this floor himself. So we have to figure this out ourselves -- no budget for an installer. We will speak to the flooring store and/or flooring supplier to get a handle on their recommendations. DH has taken one short course on hardwood install and done small sections of hardwood installing before. In his course they recommended laying the floor in the direction most travelled (e.g. if we are traveling most from front of house to back of house than the floor should run vertcially accroding to the instructior). DH has not used a leveling compound under the hardwood before. It will be a steep learning curve, but so has everything else on this build.

Has anyone seen or done a diagonal install? Anyone else seen a change of direction at a hallway or within the house. That might be appropriate for our narrow hallway.

Carol

Our one-floor house is longest East-West. Joists run North-South. Hardwood runs East-West throughout the house with no thresholds. (We'll have to move out to have the floors refinished because there's no 'stopping point'.)

I don't like the 'patchwork' effect; we only used short boards in closets.

In my current build, the wood will run the length not the width of the house. But since the kitchen and laundry will have wood-like tile, I plan to run that perpendicular. I mean, there is no way the tile and the real wood will match -- and I'm planning that it won't pretend to try by the choice of tile I'm choosing -- having this go perpendicular will help reinforce my choice of tile not to be something to mimic the wood.

In my current home, all the wood flooring (which is in all rooms except kitchen and baths, which are linoleum) runs the same way -- lengthwise to the house. But so does my hallway corridor. I have seen a diagonal install in one home and it was very attractive, but you have to have the right space for it to pull it off. In a hallway, probably not. (I think it was in a reasonably wide foyer.)

(BTW, I like Jdez's hallway! That wood for one has personality!)

Thanks chisue and artemis for your comments and explanations. You make good points. I think from reading and extrapolating from your experiences, you would be recommending I run the boards vertically (from front of house to back). Is that assumption correct? The hallway will have short boards in this scenario (patchwork then?).

Any comments anyone on staging the install (as we can't clear out the whole main floor). We are using pre-finished hardwood. Can we do the kitchen first, followed by front of house, and finish with great room/dining room? We have a wack of RTA cabinets currently stored in our future dining room that have no where else to go. There are 6 of us living in the house, so we can't empty the whole main floor.

Joist direction and subfloor update:

The subfloor in the front of the house is actually 5/8 inch and in new part of house it is 3/4 (but the framers did a good job of installing them on the same plane).

I just re-checked the direction of the joists. I may have mis-represented them above. Here is the direction:

Kitchen, great room and dining room have i-joist or joists (part of kitchen is over old joists) running vertically (from front of house to back).

hallway changes direction part way through the lengh! Most of it runs horizonatlly, but there is a middle section that runs vertically. Yikes.

The front of the house bedroom and living room have the joists running horizontally (from side to side of house).

To follow the rule of laying hardwood perpendicular to the joists we are going to have a change direction quite a bit. If we follow this guidance:

It would look like the great room, kitchen and dining room having the hardwood run across the house. The hallway, bedroom living room would then need to run from front to back. The hallway has joists of two direction so this would not see all boards running perpendicular to the joists. This is more complicated than I would like.

Carol

I don't think there's a rule that says the flooring needs to run the same way everywhere, certainly there is no one around to enforce it. It's easy to change directions at doorways and for halls. I'd run it the long dimension in each room, except where the spaces are contiguous, then in the long dimension of the bulk of the space. This frequently is also perpendicular to the floor joists.

With prefinished you can do one room at a time. If you were site finishing I'd say clear everything out, no matter the inconvenience. Depending on the installer they might want to get this all done in a day, so you'd need to talk with them about staging.

Mushcreek I would run it all the same direction so as not to chop up the look of the house. I promise it will look fine even in the narrow hallways. I think if you change directions it will look funny.

Thanks nwiegand and cpartist for your helpful comments. DH is the installer, so no problem with installer preferences for pacing of install. So, the votes seem split on whether to change directions for some rooms at doorways/archways, or keep the whole house running in one direction. The need to run perpendicular to the i-joists also seems split. The complexity of multi i-joists direction in our home makes following the perpendicular install even more complex. I will get DH to draw in some lines on the floor plan and try to post that this evening. He still likes the idea of running the boards diagonally -- even though that would be the most complicated!

Carol

Honestly your home isn't large so I would keep them all the same direction. Diagonal would look wonderful too but also realize there will be more waste with it running diagonal.

In the old houses I grew up in, direction changes in flooring were pretty common. So was the direction of the floor joists. I don't think I've ever seen a hall in an old house with cross-ways flooring. As I said, whenever there was a change in direction, there was a different piece of wood to make the transition. I'm talking OLD houses, with crude enough flooring that cross planking in relation to traffic flow could be a trip hazard! Our old house in CT had flooring run east-west in the two back rooms; north-south in the two front rooms.

In our house, the flooring will run perpendicular to the joists, which is recommended. The only exception would be the main hall from the front door to the LR. We have 1-1/8 subfloor over I-Joists on 16" centers, so running parallel to the joists isn't going to make a difference. On a 1/2" subfloor (yikes!) I would only run perpendicular to the joists. I'm not sure what you should do with the direction changes of the joists. I suppose putting in another layer of subfloor over the old one is out of the question?

Leveling compound is to fix low spots. If you have a long straight board and set on high spots, the dips in between are what you want to fill, especially since you wouldn't want to sand away anything on a 1/2" subfloor. If the floor isn't level, such as one side of the room being 1/2" lower than the other, it would take a lot of filling to correct that. What you're really trying to do is establish a flat plane, even if that plane is tilted a bit. Don't worry so much about truly level as opposed to flat.

Thanks cpartist. I wonder if diagonal might be too busy looking. Our home is 3000 square feet with the main level pictured the largest floor. I hope when DH has time to sketch up a few options you will check back and give your artistic opinion on what looks best. After looking at images on Houzz of flooring direction changes, I am not sold on the look. So, will likely choose all one direction despite having to run parallel to i-joists at times or running short boards in the 3 foot hallway section.

Carol

We just finished building our house and the hardwood installers said to run the hardwood across the joists for better support and that the warranty would not be valid if we didn't.

Thanks mushcreek for all your helpful advice and sharing your past flooring experiences. We will check the level out more carefully and see if compound is needed and where. I am a very visual person, so will need to draw up various hardwood options to be sure what to do. I just can't see running all flooring perpendicular to the joists given the changes in joist direction we are dealing with. If we thicken the old subfloor, it will no longer be on the same plane as new subfloor, and the kitchen is partly over old subfloor and new. My apologies for mistating the thickness of the original subfloor. The subfloor in the front part of the house is 5/8 thick, not 1/2. It is plywood, not OSB. So it is a little better than stated in my opening post.

Carol

Thanks zorroslw1 for your comments. Did you end up running your hardwood horizontally down any hallways (short lengths going across)? Do all your joists go in the same direction? Yes, perpendicular to i-joist would be strongest. That will require many direction changes due to the number of i-joist direction changes in our home. I will defiintely check about the hardwood warranty. Great point.

Carol

Ontariomom, I do not remember the width of that hallway but I think it is a little over 4 ft wide. Not at home or I would measure for you.

artemis, thanks but I should disclose that my floors are vinyl planks, not real wood.

Carol I have also heard the perpendicular to joists run is the way to go which I think is the long way in our house as well so that is what we did. I think diagonal wouldn't look busy - same but different to horizontal or vertical. I think changing direction of lay room to room would be busy and look disjointed. JMO.

I would lay it horizontally and add blocking where the joists are not perpendicular.

@jdez -- over 4 feet is indeed a great size for a hallway. That must be why it looks great with the hardwood layed across it. I can't believe that is wood like vinyl!

@Autumn -- thank you for your input. You are lucky your i-joists all went the same way. We are not so lucky. So another no to changing direction.

@Sanford W. Thank you very much for your vote. Very happy to hear you think there is a way to work with the change of joist direction and not have several changes to the hardwood direction. Horizontal hardwood would be perpendicular to the i-joist for much of the house - which is good. However, the less beefy joists (2 X 8) and thinner subfloor 5/8 inch thick would have the boards run parallel. We have partly braced these old joists already. The depth of the old joists are busy with in-floor pipes, plumbing pipes, insulation under hydronic pipes, wires, can light boxes etc. We will endeavor to brace where we can for extra strength. I hope, we will be able to find the space to put in 2 X 4 bracing pieces of lumber every 4 feet or so. Any other bracing options that take up less joist depth?

Carol

Diagonal can be kind of cool. If you're doing it yourself you might also consider a picture frame patterns where you run a border around the perimeter 15-30 in wide then you can fill the field in either direction or on the diagonal. The picture frame can be the same wood or include a contrasting stripe. I used an inlay strip and change in direction to create a visual distinction for the kitchen/dining area and sitting area in our large one room addition. This was as it was first laid, before the kitchen cabinets went in. It also helped to create a clear entryway into the house.

That is beautiful work, nwiegand! Well done. We are definitely still considering diagonal (especially DH). I will show him your workmanship too. Thanks.

As per diagonal and the direction of the i-joists, how does that work with support from below. Is it better for support to run them diagonally vs parallel to joists? I presume the perpendicular layout it the most superior support wise.

Carol

If the boards are the same length as opposed to random length, consider doing a herringbone within a border. It's a very custom, labor intensive look. But, since your labor is in house, you could get the luxe look for less.

Thank you very much for that creative idea live_wire_oak. I will explore if our chosen hardwood comes in same sized lengths or random. I like that idea of the border too.

Carol

I'm only familiar with hardwood, site-finished, so my experience may not apply. Does prefinished wood come in different lengths?

I view the floor as a background for the rugs and furniture -- not as competition for the eye. We had our installer buy extra bundles of boards and throw out the short boards not needed to finish out closets.

There's no need to use short boards in a hall. I would want the eye to just continue across the adjacent room into the hall, as uninterrupted as possible.

Diagonal may 'open up' the spaces, as happens when you set rectangular tiles on the diagonal in a bathroom. I think of wood on the diagonal as a 'modern' style. It's certainly more work to install. (We want you to have a nice floor, not a cursing husband.

(I've been fine with wood flooring in our kitchen. No need for hard-on-my-joints tile.)

Ontariomom, I'm in your area right now, otherwise I'd take a photo for you. I ran my floors in the opposite direction in the hall to avoid the short pieces. Once upon a time, the flooring had to be run perpendicular to the joists for structure, because there was no subfloor. Nowadays, especially with a good plywood base, you can do whichever. But a lot of people still do it the old way for an authentic look. Joists would often be run the short way, do opposite, the floors go the long way.

You can get 1/8" plywood. In your case, it sounds like 1/4" would be the right amount to level your floor. Self leveling cement would be messy, and only necessary if you've got really wonky floors and can't fix them with wood.

Chisue: Thanks for your comments. I am not sure about the lengths that prefinsihed comes in. I need to work that out. Good point if we lay the hardwood across the hall (rather than the length of the hall) it will lnot look chopped up at the bedroom door, closets and living room as that direction would just continue in to these rooms. The other door ways (laundry and bath off the hall) switches to tile. Yes diagonal is more modern. Probably why DH likes it better than I do, as I prefer a more transitional than he does.

Amberm: Hope you are enjoying your Ontario visit. I would love to see a photo of your hardwood transitions when you get back to AB (Calgary right?). Thanks for the guidance on joist strucuture if we have plywood (vs the subfloorless days of yore). Our old subfloor is only unlevel in a few points (a few sags). A 1/4 inch would make it taller than the new subfloor. It seems the framers lowered the new floor so it would be on the same plane as the old subfloor. It may be that DH can use 1/8 inch plywood in a few low points instead of the messy leveling compound. Thanks for that suggestion. Do you happen to have a vote on best hardwood direction in our floor plan?

Carol

Thanks for the image, Ken. It looks good in the picture.

Carol