One important factor when purchasing your oak flooring is choosing a width of board which suits your needs and tastes. Our oak flooring boards range in widths from as thin as 120mm to as wide as 300mm. The choice of wider oak boards generally comes down to personal taste, however there are also other points that should be considered.

How Are You Fitting The Floor?

How you intend to fit your oak floor, can greatly affect whether you are able to opt for a wider plank of oak flooring. For solid oak flooring, if you intend to glue down your boards we do not recommend choosing a board which is any wider than 120mm in width. The wider a solid oak board is, the more prone it is to movement and cupping. When glueing wider boards of solid oak flooring this risk is increased. If your only option is to glue down your oak flooring, and you require a wider board, we would always recommend an engineered oak board.

If you are planning on nailing or screwing down the boards, the preferred method nowadays is to use the secret screwing or nailing method. This method involves using a nail gun or power driver to drive the fixings through the tongue of each board into the sub-floor or joists below. As the tongue is hidden by the groove of the next board, this leaves the fixing hidden from sight.

Due to the increased probability of movement with wider boards, for oak boards of 180mm and over we always recommend a form of surface fixing. This is should be done further to screwing or nailing the tongue.

How Big Is Your Room?

One point of note when choosing a wider board of oak flooring is how it will look in relation to to your room. Generally wider boards can give the impression to smaller rooms that they are bigger than they actually are.

This choice really does come down to what looks better in your environment and what you prefer.

What Grade Do You Want?

As with thinner boards, what particular grade of oak flooring you are after is an important factor. Obviously when if you choose a barn or a character grade, you are likely to have more knots or shakes per each individual board. The wider cut of boards also makes grades such as select and prime much more difficult to source, hence the increased cost.

For all our grades of both solid and engineered oak flooring, any of the widths available can be mixed and matched if required. This allows you to mix a 180mm wide board with a 240mm wide board if required.

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