How to Lay Floating Vinyl Plank Flooring

By Steve — flooring and wet-areas, Adelaide Hills.

Click-lock vinyl plank is the easiest “real” flooring product in the Aussie market. Once you’re past the first row, an experienced flooring hand lays at 15 m²/hr — a 40 m² living room is half a day’s work. The catch is the first row sets up everything that follows. Get the first row wrong by 3 mm and by the time you reach the far wall you’ve got a wedge-shaped gap that you can’t fix without lifting the whole floor.

The rule I learned from a tiler 20 years ago and apply to every floor I lay: snap a chalk line, don’t trust the wall. Aussie houses — especially anything pre-2000 — are not square. Walls bow, corners aren’t 90°, and an 8 m wall might be 30 mm out of straight along its length. If you lay your first row tight against the wall, you’ve baked that bow into your floor.

The Aussie gotcha that ruins more vinyl plank installs than any other: moisture from the slab. Aussie homes built before 2000 usually have no waterproof membrane under the slab. The slab emits moisture vapour into the room. Vinyl plank traps that moisture between the plank and the slab; over a year, you get bubbling, lifted joints, and (in a worst case) mould. AS 1884 requires a moisture test before vinyl flooring goes down. Half the Aussie installs I see have skipped this step. Here’s the right way.

What you’ll need

• Vinyl plank — 5 mm minimum thickness, hybrid SPC core for high-traffic (Karndean Korlok, Godfrey Hirst Liberty, Quick-Step Livyn) or 4 mm budget (Bunnings Senso, Ozito-grade)
• Underlay — 1.5 mm IXPE or 2 mm cork; sometimes pre-attached to plank
• Moisture meter (Tramex CMEX II for hire; Bunnings rents them)
• Calcium chloride moisture test kit (for slab moisture per AS 1884) — about $40 at flooring suppliers
• Chalk line
• Tape measure (8 m steel)
• Stanley knife with hook blades
• Mitre saw or jigsaw for end cuts
• Tapping block and pull bar
• Rubber mallet
• 10 mm spacers (for expansion gap)
• Vacuum and damp mop

Step 1: Acclimatise the planks for 48 hours

Stack the boxes in the room where they’ll be laid, lying flat, not on edge. Open the boxes. Leave 48 hours minimum — 72 in summer or in an unheated room in winter. Adelaide Hills swings 18°C between 7am and 3pm in spring and the planks need to settle to room temperature.

Skip this step and the planks will expand or contract after install, and you’ll get gaps or buckling.

Step 2: Test the subfloor moisture (the AS 1884 step)

For a slab: the calcium chloride test. Mark out a 600×600 mm area, tape a sealed cup of calcium chloride onto the slab, leave 72 hours, weigh the difference. If moisture emission is over 4 lbs/1000 sq ft/24 hours (the AS 1884 limit), you can’t lay vinyl plank without a moisture suppression treatment first.

Quick check (not a substitute, but a screening): Tramex moisture meter on the slab. Reading over 4% on the relative scale = stop and do the calcium chloride test properly.

If you’ve got a high reading, the fix is a liquid-applied moisture barrier (Mapei Eco Prim PU 1K, Sika MoistureBlock) before underlay. This adds half a day and $200 to a 40 m² floor and saves you $4000 in rip-up-and-relay 18 months later.

Step 3: Check and prepare the subfloor

Subfloor must be flat (3 mm tolerance over 3 m), clean, dry. Sweep, then vacuum, then damp-mop. Any high spots get ground with a concrete grinder; any low spots get filled with a self-levelling compound (Davco SLU or Mapei Ultraplan).

For a timber subfloor: check for squeaks (screw down to the joists where they squeak), nail pops, and rotten boards. The vinyl will telegraph any defect within a year.

Step 4: Plan the layout — measure both walls before you start

Measure the room width (perpendicular to the planks). Divide by the plank width (typically 178 mm). The result tells you how wide your last row will be. If that number is less than half a plank wide (89 mm), you need to rip the FIRST row narrower so the last row isn’t a sliver.

Sliver-width last rows snap, look terrible, and won’t lock in. Plan to start narrow if needed.

Step 5: Snap a chalk line, not the wall

This is the rule. Pick a “control wall” (the longest, straightest wall in the room). Measure 250 mm out from that wall at each end (250 mm = plank width 178 + 10 mm expansion + a working margin). Snap a chalk line between the two marks — that’s your guide line.

The first row of planks sits against the chalk line, not against the wall. The 10 mm expansion gap to the wall gets filled with spacers, and any wall bow gets absorbed by scribing the first row to the wall (cutting a curve into the plank to match the wall bow). Tedious but straight floor at the end.

Step 6: Lay the first row, locking long-edge to long-edge

Underlay first if not pre-attached — roll out, butt the seams, tape with the supplied tape. Don’t overlap, butt only.

First plank: tongue-side facing the chalk line. Push spacers between the plank and the wall (not between the plank and the chalk line — the chalk line is interior). Lock the second plank end-to-end with the first; push the long-edge tongue down and engage. Continue along the row.

End cuts: measure, mark, score with the Stanley knife (deep score, both sides), snap. Or jigsaw for curves around door jambs.

Step 7: Stagger the joints — 300 mm minimum

Aussie click-lock standard is 300 mm minimum stagger between end joints in adjacent rows. Visual rhythm AND structural integrity — joints aligned within 300 mm fail at the joint. Most plank brands have a stagger pattern recommended on the box; follow it.

Don’t waste offcuts. The cut-off from row 1’s last plank starts row 2 (if it’s over 300 mm). Otherwise discard, cut a fresh plank to start row 2 at the right stagger.

Step 8: Tap and pull-bar at every joint

The tapping block goes against the long edge or end edge of a freshly-locked plank, and you give it a few raps with the rubber mallet to seat the joint. The pull bar hooks over the far end of a plank when you’re working into a wall and can’t tap from the open side. Both tools are $20 at Bunnings; a roll of vinyl plank without them takes three times as long and looks loose.

Step 9: Fit doorways and tricky cuts

Door jambs: undercut the jamb with a flush-cut saw (or pull-saw) so the plank slides under, instead of cutting the plank around the jamb. Looks 100x better. The reveal of plank under the jamb hides any cut imperfections.

Around a toilet (if running into a bathroom — and remember vinyl in wet areas needs a perimeter silicone seal): template the toilet base on cardboard, transfer to the plank, jigsaw. Silicone the perimeter with neutral-cure, sanitary-grade silicone (Selleys Wet Area).

Step 10: Last row — scribe, cut, lock

Last row is almost always a rip cut (lengthways). Measure the gap from the second-to-last row to the wall, subtract 10 mm for expansion, and rip the plank to that width. Use a Stanley knife with hook blade and a steel ruler — score top, snap, score bottom paper, snap clean.

Lock the last row in with the pull bar — there’s no room for a tapping block this close to the wall. Pull bar engages the click joint without you needing to swing.

Pull the spacers, fit skirting boards or scotia trim to cover the 10 mm expansion gap, and run a vacuum. Done.

Step 11: Final perimeter — silicone wet-area joints

If the floor runs into a wet area or a kitchen, the perimeter (where plank meets skirting or where plank meets bath or shower base) needs sealing. Neutral-cure sanitary silicone (Selleys Wet Area). Run a 5 mm bead, smooth with a wet finger, peel masking tape immediately.

This is the AS 3740 wet-area waterproofing intersection — vinyl plank itself isn’t a waterproof system, but a properly siliconed perimeter on top of a properly waterproofed substrate gives you a sealed floor.

Step 12: Care — what to tell the household

Vinyl plank cleans with a damp microfibre and a pH-neutral floor cleaner (Bona, or the Karndean-branded cleaner). NO steam mops — they force water and heat between the joints and lift the planks within a year. NO eucalyptus oil or solvent-based cleaners — they degrade the wear layer. NO dragging furniture without felt pads under the legs — even a pulled-out dining chair scratches a vinyl plank wear layer.

Tell the household this on day one. Most vinyl plank failures I see are care failures, not install failures.

The Steve rule

The Steve rule for vinyl plank is: moisture test, chalk line, scribe first row. AS 1884 moisture test means the floor lasts 15 years instead of 18 months. Chalk line means the floor is straight even if the wall isn’t. Scribed first row means the wall-line gap looks intentional. Skip any one of those and the floor will tell on you within a year.

Got a vinyl plank install (or a moisture-failure horror story) worth sharing? Send us a write-up.