INSTALLING YOUR FORBO LUXURY VINYL TILES
You’ve selected luxury vinyl tiles as your flooring of choice for your home. Whether you are installing it in your lounge, bedroom or kitchen read below our guides on how to lay LVT flooring so you install it correctly for the best possible result
General advice
Areas, where the flooring will be laid, should be clean, free from other trades, fully enclosed and weather tight. Your subfloor should be clean, smooth, even and dry. If you’re planning to lay a new concrete sub-floor, you should wait for it to dry which can take anywhere between 2-4 months.
Acclimatise your LVT
Acclimatisation is an important step in any LVT flooring installation. To do this, you should leave the closed boxes of flooring in the room you’re installing in for 48 hours before laying it. The temperature should be maintained between 18 and 28 degrees to stop excessive bowing. Heating conditions need to be normal in the room so the boards can react to the living environment before installation. This will stop excessive movement after installation which can cause issues afterwards.
Acceptable substrates for LVT flooring
You can lay Forbo Allura LVT and Enduro LVT click flooring onto the following substrates:
- New or existing concrete or cement screed.
- New or existing wood panel or particleboard.
- Existing ceramics tiles.
- Existing in-situ floor finishes (resin) at least 2mm thick.
- Existing floor paint.
- Existing compact resilient floor coverings (semi-flexible tiles, sheet vinyl flooring and linoleum).
- Raised access floors.
- Existing wood block floors (on upper floors only).
Installing LVT flooring
We recommend that Forbo Enduro and Allura Click be installed using Forbo Click underlay because it offers a reduction of walking and impact sound levels, alongside better walking comfort. This underlay is loose laid in the same direction as the panels. The protective film must be peeled back before installing the panels. Do this gradually during the installation by staying slightly ahead of the panel installation. Lay your LVT flooring directly on top of the underlay by starting against a straight wall using 7-10mm spacers to maintain an even gap between the LVT board and the wall. Don’t lay the flooring in any single direction for more than 7m. This often breaks up rooms using threshold strips, which are used to hide expansion gaps. Threshold strips should also be used at every door opening to allow expansion gaps to be used. When using an expansion gap, it should be 5mm around the perimeter and any fixed components.
Laying and cutting panels
Enduro and Allura Click LVT can be cut with normal installation tools such as utility knives. You can score several times from the top surface of the tile or plank with a utility knife and a straight blade. After scoring with a knife, bend the tile back along the cut line and complete the cut through the remaining thickness from the back of the tile. Warming the surface with a hot air gun can make cutting easier if you’re cutting around shapes in your home. Cutting tiles with a power cutting tool is also suitable.
Installation direction
- Work from left to right in the installation area with the tongue sides of the panel pointed to the wall
- Install the first panel with the tongue side pointing to the wall ensuring a 5mm gap is left between the face and side of the panel and the wall.
- Lay the next panel to the first making sure that face side tongue and groove connections fit exactly on top of one another. Lock them by lightly tapping them with a white (non-marking) rubber hammer.
- Continue laying the remaining tiles in the first row. Cut the panel of the first row, allowing for a 5mm gap between the end of the panel and the wall. The length of the final panel should be at least 30cm. The offcut from this last panel in this row should be at least 30cm to be used as the first panel of the next row.
- Set this panel into the groove of the first panel of the first row at an angle of approximately 300 and lower it with slight pressure against the previous row.
- Take the next panel and insert it, also at an angle of 30 degrees, longitudinally into the panel of the first row that is already lying flat on the floor. Guide the panel so the joint of the face side (short) aligns with the joint of the head side of the previously laid panel and lock the face joints with a white rubber hammer as described above.
- Continue in this manner to install the remaining rows. Ensure the face side (short) joints are staggered between the adjacent rows by at least 20cm to achieve optimal installation.
- When installing the last row, the distance between the wall and the previously laid row is measured and the panel width is cut to this size (remember to allow for the 5mm wide expansion perimeter gap)
