Floating Hardwood Floors

Floating hardwood floors offers a convenient, popular method for DIY installations. Unlike traditional hardwood installations, this approach doesn’t require glue, staples, or nails. Instead, each plank features tongue and groove sections that easily interlock, forming a secure connection without fasteners. As a result, the hardwood floor floats above the subfloor, allowing for a straightforward and efficient installation process.

In the hardwood flooring category, only our engineered hardwood floors can use a floating installation. (Solid hardwoods must be attached to the subfloor with nails, staples or glue.).

Engineered hardwood boards that are able to be floated either feature a tongue-and-groove construction, or edges with a locking mechanism.

Check the engineered hardwood installation guide for the installation methods recommended for your flooring choice. Some engineered hardwood floors are designed with tongue-and-groove boards. You can turn these into a floating hardwood floor by applying a bead of glue in the groove, and then inserting the tongue of the next board. You still don’t need an adhesive to glue the boards down to the subfloor — the glue is only required to connect the boards.

This is another type of floating floor that an experienced DIYer can handle, but it will take more time than the locking system described above.

What are the benefits of using a floating hardwood floor installation?

There are several reasons a floating wood floor might be appealing to you:

There are several reasons a floating wood floor might be appealing to you:

• Subfloor flexibility – You can float wood over most subfloors, so long as it’s level, flat, clean, dry and sound.
• DIY-friendly – It’s a super DIY-friendly installation method, since little (if any) adhesive is necessary, and no nails or staples.
• Easy cleanup – After installation, it’s easy to clean up. All that’s needed is a mop or broom to dust off your FLOATING floors, and a little warm water for any glue residue, if glue was used.
• Easy removal – Removal is easy and can be done with little impact, should the use of the room change and a new floor is needed.
• Cost-saving – The cost to install a floating wood floor is less than other methods, because it’s much faster!
• Lots of Design options – It’s easy to find a look you’ll love that can also be a floating wood floor. Engineered hardwood floors, which are the only wood floors that can be floated, come in an enormous variety of colors and styles.

Whether you use a floating hardwood floor with glue, or our locking technology, it’s possible that you will notice a bit more vertical movement on floors than if they were glued, stapled or nailed down. Most people do not even notice this though, nor find it bothersome.

If you do use glue to connect your tongue-and-groove boards, you need to wait 8 hours for the glue to dry before walking on the floor.

Yes! Using floating hardwood floors allow you to have the beauty of hardwood in moisture-prone basements, where solid hardwood flooring is not recommended. In a floating installation with engineered hardwood, boards respond to humidity and temperature changes as a unit, expanding toward the walls or contracting away. A properly installed floating wood floor should not bow or buckle in a moist environment, or develop gaps under dry conditions.

No matter how the floating hardwood is installed, an underlayment should be installed over the subfloor first, to give the flooring with some added protection against moisture and to improve sound transmission.

View detailed step-by-step instructions on how to install a floating hardwood floor in our Specs & Guides Library.