Throw Out the Instructions in the Box

Let's be honest: the statement "the instructions are in the box" is almost laughable! The tiny paper insert folded inside your flooring carton is never going to tell you where to start a multi-room laminate or vinyl plank floor or how to transfer your layout line from a hallway into a living room. Just rip those up and throw them away.

I'm going to walk you through the exact same methods I use on all of my professional multi-room installations. One quick piece of advice: the first time I made caramel rolls from Crouton Jack's YouTube channel, I watched his video at least six times—pausing the video, completing a step, and hitting play again so I didn't miss anything. Do the exact same thing with the videos on this page while you lay out your floor. It will make things so much easier!

Step 1 Base Your Entire Multi-Room Installation Off the Hallway

So where do you start when connecting multiple rooms? The answer is simple: you base the entire installation off of the main hallway—and your planks should always run the long way down the hall (parallel to the longest hallway walls).

Very rarely do I ever break this law. Here are the 3 reasons why running your planks the long way down the hallway—and centering your layout off the hall—is critical:

1. It looks 10x better visually: Running planks lengthwise down the hall draws the eye forward and makes narrow hallways feel longer and wider.
2. It prevents buckling in the hallway: When you install planks the short way across a narrow hall, that hallway becomes a weak spot with a much higher risk of buckling—especially if you have high humidity in your neck of the woods. Running planks parallel to the long hallway walls gives the floor structural strength.
3. It saves you from nightmare cuts at every bedroom doorway: If you ignore the hallway and doorways during layout, you can end up with 1/2-inch slivers wrapping around door jambs that are nearly impossible to lock together.

Step 2 Pick Your Starting Room to Avoid Working Backwards

Wait—if we base our layout measurement off the hallway, does that mean we physically start laying our first boards inside the tight hallway? No! First we measure and snap our layout line in the hallway, and then we transfer that line into the best starting room.

We don't throw darts at a floor plan to pick the starting room. Every plank has a tongue (male edge) and a groove (female track). Sliding the tongue into the groove moving forward is fast and easy. Going the opposite way—into a closet, under cabinets, or into an entire secondary room—is what I call working backwards.

While I teach tricks that make working backwards totally doable, it is slower—so you want to look over all the rooms you're connecting and choose the starting room (like a main living room or family room aligned with the hall) that lets you install forward across the largest percentage of your house.

Step 3 Put Together 10 Boards (Paper Cheat Sheet vs. The Layout Buddy)

To transfer a layout line from your hallway across 20 or 30 feet into another room, even a 1/32-inch measurement error on a single board will throw you off by a full inch across the room! Why? Because almost all laminate and vinyl plank is manufactured in metric (millimeters), so the plank seams never line up cleanly with standard inch marks on a regular tape measure.

That is why I always click together 10 full boards flat on the floor first. (You don't carry those 10 boards around the house—you just lay them flat in one spot so you can measure across them!) From there, you have two ways to record your plank multiples:

1. The Old-School "Paper Cheat Sheet" Method (Shown in My Videos Below): Measure across your 10 locked boards with a standard tape measure and write that number down on a piece of paper. Then add another 10 boards to that number (20 boards, 30 boards, up to 60–80 boards) using a fraction calculator app on your phone so you have a written cheat sheet to check cuts and transfer lines. It works, but coming up with all those fraction numbers on paper is slow and a pain in the butt!
2. The Fast, Zero-Math Way (The Layout Buddy): You still click your 10 boards together on the floor, but instead of writing down a paper cheat sheet or fighting metric fractions, you stretch The Layout Buddy across those 10 planks and make marks directly onto the blank white tape measure blade at each plank seam. Now you can pull The Layout Buddy across your hallway and rooms to see where every plank lands—without reading a single fraction!

Step 4 Center the Hallway & Check Your Wall Pieces

Now let's center the hallway so you don't end up with a 5-inch board on one side of the hall and a 1-inch sliver on the other:

1. Measure the hallway width and divide in half: Measure from wall to wall across your hallway and divide by 2. For example, if your hallway is 42 inches wide, half of that is 21 inches.
2. Check 21 inches on your 10 boards (or Layout Buddy): Go to your 10 locked boards, measure 21 inches, and mark the plank with a marker (pro tip: denatured alcohol from any paint store wipes permanent marker right off!)—or just pull The Layout Buddy to 21 inches and look at your plank marks. That shows you the exact size of the cut piece against both hallway walls.
3. Shift by half a plank if the hallway wall piece is too small: If centering the seam leaves a skinny sliver along the hallway walls, add half of one plank's width to your hallway center mark so both walls get a wide, balanced board.

Step 5 Snap Your Hallway Chalk Line & Transfer It Into Your Starting Room

Once you know where the planks need to fall in the hallway, snap a crisp chalk line down the hallway floor. This line is the master backbone for your entire multi-room floor!

Next, extend or measure off that hallway chalk line into the room where you decided to start (using your 10-board cheat sheet numbers or the marks on The Layout Buddy) and snap your reference line in the starting room. Because the two lines are spaced an exact multiple of full planks apart, the rows you build in your starting room will march straight across the room and land dead on your centered hallway layout when you reach the hall!

Step 6 Build & Anchor Your First 3 to 5 Rows (And Install Row 1 Last!)

We made it! Now that your reference line is snapped in your starting room, it's time to put planks on the floor. I always start by clicking together 3 to 5 rows from wall to wall to build a solid foundation—while leaving the very first row or two against the starting wall open until the very end.

Why wait until the very end to install the first row or two?

• A solid foundation that doesn't move is the #1 key to an easy install: Once those 3 to 5 rows are positioned at an exact plank multiple from your chalk line, I click scrap pieces onto the back edge and screw the scraps to the subfloor so the floor cannot shift a fraction of an inch.
• You skip tricky cuts until you have leverage: Waiting until the end lets you skip floor vents, crooked walls, cabinets, fireplaces, and cubby holes upfront—and come back to cut them off a rock-solid, anchored floor.

Fear Is a Liar: You Can Tackle a Multi-Room Floor With Confidence!

You don't have to be intimidated by a multi-room flooring project when you have a clear plan and the right techniques at your fingertips. Watch this video for over a dozen pro tips that will help you through your entire installation: