Wood-tone plank floor through kitchen and living area

One plank floor runs through the whole open space: kitchen, dining table, entry and living room. The planks are medium brown and all run the same direction, so the rooms read as one area. A dark wood-slat opening separates the seating area from the kitchen.

The kitchen has white cabinets, a white peninsula with dark stools, a black backsplash and two large black pendant lights. The warm brown floor keeps all that white and black from looking cold. In the living room you can see a floor register cut into the planks and an area rug on top.

One floor through several rooms means no transition strips at doorways, but the whole area has to be flat enough to carry a single layout. On a job like this we check the subfloor across every room first, start from a line parallel to the longest wall, and plan cuts around registers, the peninsula and the slat wall before setting. With long planks we offset the end joints by no more than a third of the plank length, which keeps the edges flat. A large open floor also needs movement joints, usually hidden at the perimeter under the base trim.