Herringbone Flooring in Kew: Planning the Pattern for Your House

Herringbone works in most Kew houses, and it looks its best when the layout is planned around the house before a single block goes down. Our herringbone is engineered European oak in 900 × 150 × 15 mm blocks, in six colours. This guide covers the decisions that matter most in Kew: which way the pattern runs, where it starts, whether you want a border, and how much extra material to order.

Why herringbone suits so many Kew houses

Kew has a mix of housing that suits a pattern floor particularly well. There are Victorian and Edwardian houses with long central halls and formal front rooms, interwar homes with a wide entry hall, and post-war architect-designed houses on the slopes down towards the Yarra. Many of the older ones have been extended at the back, so the original rooms and the new family area sit side by side.

A herringbone floor gives the older part of the house its own character without looking like an imitation. In a hall with a high ceiling and a decorative arch, the pattern leads your eye from the front door towards the back of the house. In a mid-century house it reads as a deliberate, architectural choice, especially where there is already exposed timber in the ceiling.

If your house still has original parquetry in good order, we recommend keeping it. Laying new herringbone next to a sound original floor rarely improves either of them, so it is usually better to start the new floor at the next doorway.

The blocks and the six colours

Every block in our herringbone range is 900 mm long, 150 mm wide and 15 mm thick, with a 4 mm European oak wear layer on an engineered core. The edges have a micro bevel, the blocks join with tongue and groove, and the surface is matte brushed. A pack holds 12 blocks and covers 1.62 m².

Those are big blocks compared with the small parquetry pieces in older floors. A bigger block gives a bolder zigzag with fewer joins, which is why it looks at home in a large open-plan extension as well as a period hall.

The six colours, and where we tend to see them work in Kew:

• White Smoke: our palest, whitewashed look, for renovated interiors with white walls and joinery.
• Smoke Grey: a cooler option for houses with charcoal, stone or concrete finishes.
• Natural Oak: the easiest to live with, and a good match for mid-century houses with timber ceilings.
• Light Tan: a lighter warm tone for halls that don’t get much daylight.
• Hidalgo: a deeper warm brown that sits well with dark painted skirtings and original doors.
• Caramel Sundae: a warm, caramel-leaning oak that sits well with timber furniture and period detail.

All six also come in our standard plank, so you can run the pattern in the hall and front rooms and use plank in the same colour elsewhere. The full pattern range is on our herringbone and chevron page.

Which way should the pattern run?

A herringbone floor has a direction. The zigzag points one way down the room, and the eye follows it. Getting this right matters more than the colour.

In a long Victorian or Edwardian hall

Run the pattern along the hall, from the front door towards the back. The zigzag should sit centred in the hall. In older houses the two walls are rarely perfectly parallel, so the installer sets a centre line from the middle of the hall at several points, not from one wall. If the pattern is set off one wall and that wall wanders, the blocks along the other side end up visibly wider at one end than the other.

In a rear open-plan extension

Run it along the longest line of sight, which in many rear extensions is from the kitchen towards the garden doors. That makes the room look longer and points you at the view. Running it across the room makes the space feel wider but busier.

In rooms off the hall

You can carry the pattern through each doorway so it reads as one floor, or set out each room on its own centre line. Carrying it through looks better in a house where the doors usually stand open. Setting out each room separately lets every room look centred, which suits formal front rooms where the pattern is on show. Either way, it is best to decide before the quote, because it changes the set-out time.

Borders, fireplaces and walls that aren’t square

A border is a frame of plank or blocks laid around the edge of the room, with the herringbone inside it. It is optional, but in period rooms it solves several problems at once.

First, it hides the cut ends of the blocks. Without a border, every block that meets the skirting is cut at an angle, and those cuts sit right where you look. Second, it absorbs walls that are out of square. The border can taper slightly to follow the wall while the pattern inside stays straight. Third, it gives you a clean edge around features. Fireplace hearths, bay windows and the curved wall at the end of some Edwardian halls are much easier to finish with a border than by cutting blocks to shape.

A single-board border is the most common. Wider or double borders look more traditional and add more fitting time. In a modern extension many people leave out the border altogether and let the pattern run to the skirting, which gives a cleaner look.

What goes underneath herringbone

Herringbone is almost always glued down, and short blocks show every dip in the floor below. That makes subfloor preparation more important than with plank.

Most older Kew houses sit on stumps, with the original boards on joists. Those boards are often cupped or loose after a century of use. They get fixed down and checked for flatness, and on some jobs a layer of sheeting goes over them to give the glue a flat, stable surface. Rear extensions are usually on a slab, which needs a moisture test and any levelling before blocks go down. Our Kew flooring page covers where the old house meets the extension and what happens at the bottom stair when the floor height changes.

How much extra material to order

Herringbone needs a bigger offcut allowance than plank, because every block that meets a wall or border is cut at an angle. Narrow spaces create proportionally more offcuts than open rooms, since a hall has two long cut edges and not much floor between them.

A quick way to see the scale of it:

1. Measure the hall. Say it is 1.2 m wide and 9 m long, which is 10.8 m².
2. Divide by the pack coverage: 10.8 ÷ 1.62 = 6.67 packs.
3. So seven packs covers the bare area with nothing to spare. The offcut allowance decides whether you order eight packs or nine.
4. Add any rooms that share the pattern, and work each one out the same way.

We work out the allowance from your actual room shapes at the measure, not from one percentage for every job. If you have room to store it, we suggest ordering a spare pack beyond that. Having a few matching blocks on hand makes a future repair far easier. Our guide to herringbone flooring cost in Melbourne walks through the full pack maths and what else changes the price.

Where the pattern stops

Very few Kew houses do herringbone everywhere. The usual plan is pattern in the hall and formal rooms, plank in the bedrooms, kitchen and family area. The join between the two needs as much thought as the pattern itself.

A doorway is the natural place for the change. The herringbone finishes against a border or a threshold board, and the plank starts on the other side. In an open-plan space with no doorway, a border across the floor marks the change, and it looks intentional rather than accidental. If you are deciding between herringbone and a chevron in the formal rooms, our chevron vs herringbone guide sets out the differences.

Your next step

Take a photo of your hall from the front door, and a rough floor plan with the rooms you are thinking about. You’re welcome to bring them to the showroom so we can lay out samples of two or three colours and talk through direction and borders. Alternatively, book a free measure and quote and we will set out the options in your own rooms. You can call 1300 690 160 or visit us at 2/1386 Toorak Road, Camberwell, a short drive from most of Kew.