The covering, read by property

Coverings are usually chosen by their picture. They behave by their properties. The table reads across the five that come off the van, one working property at a time, so a kitchen and a bedroom stop being the same decision.

Five coverings, read down the properties that decide a room.
Property	Sheet vinyl	LVT plank	Laminate	Engineered wood	Carpet
Underfoot	Warm and slightly giving.	Hard and flat, very still.	Firm, and livelier than it looks.	Firm with a board note under the heel.	Soft, and quiet from the first step.
Water on the floor	Sheds it; the seams are welded shut.	Sheds it while the joints are tight.	Wicks it at the board ends.	Marks if it stands, so it is wiped at once.	Holds it in the pile until it is lifted out.
Sound in the room	Quiet, and quieter again over a backing.	Quiet when bonded, sharp when clicked dry.	The noisiest of the five without a good underlay.	Warm-toned, and calmed by acoustic underlay.	Soaks up both footfall and voices.
How it is cut	Scribed and templated in one piece.	Scored and snapped, plank by plank.	Sawn to length, with the ends staggered.	Sawn, then graded by eye as it is laid.	Knifed from the back, then stretched on.
Repairing a damaged patch	A let-in patch, welded round its edge.	A single plank lifted and replaced.	Boards taken back to the damage, then relaid.	Filled, or the top layer sanded locally.	A plug cut in from an offcut.
Lifting it later	Peels in strips; bonded work leaves residue.	Clicked goods lift clean, glued goods do not.	Unclicks and stacks in an hour.	Floated goods lift; bonded goods come up in pieces.	Pulls off the pins, then the strip stays.
What wears first	The wear layer at the doorway.	The wear layer on the walking line.	The board ends and the melamine face.	The lacquer, long before the timber.	The pile where the route crosses the room.

Five coverings, and how each one walks

Sheet vinyl

Comes off a roll and covers a room in one piece while the roll width allows it. It is warm to the foot, quiet and forgiving of a splash, then it seams or welds where a room outruns the width. It follows the base closely, so a hollow reads through the surface until the base is made good.

LVT plank

Cut plank by plank and laid hard and flat underfoot. Planks are dry-laid across the room first, until the cut at each wall balances, then they are set for good. A glued LVT floor sits tight to the base and takes a rolling chair without shifting.

Laminate

Floats. Boards click into each other and travel as one raft, so a gap is left at every wall, pipe and frame while the floor is laid. It walks a little livelier than a bonded floor, then quietens under a heavier underlay.

Engineered wood

Carries a real timber top layer over a ply core, so it reads as a board floor while moving less than solid timber. It is left standing in the room until it settles to the heat and the moisture there, then it goes down.

Carpet

Stretched, not laid loose. Tack strip goes down round the perimeter, then underlay, then the carpet is knee-kicked onto the pins and trimmed into the skirting. It soaks up sound in a way no hard covering does, then it shows a traffic line where a route crosses the room.

Setting out, before the first cut

Setting out is the quiet half hour that decides how a floor looks for years. It is done before anything is fixed, while everything can still move.

A plank floor is laid to the light in a living room and to the length in a hall, so the run carries the eye down the room rather than across it. The first row is measured off the longest straight wall, then the last row is checked at the same time, until the cut at both walls comes out even. A row that finishes on a sliver of plank is a set-out that was started at the wrong wall.

Board ends are staggered as the floor moves across the room, so no two joints sit close together in neighbouring rows. Sheet goods are turned so the seam falls out of the traffic line and away from the doorway. Carpet is turned so the pile leans one way through the whole flat, since two pieces laid opposite ways read as two different colours under the same lamp.

Pattern and repeat

A patterned covering is set out from the middle of the room outward, then the cut lands in the corners where a small loss is not read. A herringbone layout is set out from a centre line and every perimeter cut lands on the diagonal, which is exactly why it carries the largest waste allowance of the six on the rooms page.

What the label is telling you

Every pack carries the figures that settle the order, and the same figures go onto the job sheet at the measure. They are read off the label rather than guessed at.

The figures taken off a pack or a roll at the measure.
On the label	What it governs
Coverage per pack	How many packs the area to order divides into, rounded up to the next whole one.
Roll width	Whether a room takes one piece or needs a seam, then where that seam falls.
Wear layer	Quoted in microns on vinyl and LVT; it is what traffic actually walks on.
Abrasion class	The laminate face grade, matched to how hard the room is used.
Top layer depth	On engineered wood, how much timber there is to sand in later life.
Total thickness	Goes into the build-up, then into the door clearance on the rooms page.
Batch number	Shade runs by batch, so one batch covers a whole flat and the number is recorded.
Heating suitability	Whether the covering may be laid over underfloor heating at all.

Thickness figures from this table feed the build-up sum on the rooms page, and the base they land on is set out on the base page.