Herringbone vs Chevron Floors: How to Choose for a Florida Home

Herringbone vs chevron comes down to one cut. In a herringbone floor, rectangular boards with square ends meet at right angles, the end of one board butting against the side of the next, so the pattern steps down the room in a staggered zigzag. In a chevron floor, the ends of each board are cut at an angle so the boards meet point to point, and the pattern runs as one clean line of V shapes.

Both are laid as a design rather than as rows, and both are decided by the same thing on site: where the centre line goes. This guide covers how each pattern reads in a Florida room, which way to run it, and what changes about the install when a floor stops being planks and becomes a pattern.

What is the difference between herringbone and chevron?

Look at where two boards meet. Herringbone boards are plain rectangles. Each one is laid at ninety degrees to its neighbour, and the joints step back and forth along the floor. Chevron boards have their ends cut on an angle, so a left board and a right board meet in a single point, and the seam down the middle of the pattern is a straight line.

That one cut changes how the floor reads. Herringbone has a woven texture, and the eye moves across it as much as along it. Chevron is more graphic: the points line up into arrows, and the floor looks as if it is heading somewhere. Neither is more correct. Herringbone tends to feel warmer and more traditional, chevron cleaner and more architectural, and the same oak in the same colour reads differently in each.

Patterned wood boards are usually made in left-hand and right-hand versions, because the tongue and groove have to meet from both directions. Chevron goes a step further. The angle is part of the board, so a chevron floor usually starts with boards made for chevron, with the ends cut at the factory.

How do herringbone and chevron look in a long room?

A long room is where the difference shows most. Run chevron down the length of a hallway or an open living and dining space and the points read as arrows toward the far wall. The room feels longer, and whatever is at the end of it gets the attention. Turn the same floor across the room and the arrows point at a side wall, which is rarely what anybody wants.

Herringbone is more forgiving. Its zigzag still has a direction, but the stepped joints break the line up, so it reads more as texture than as an arrow. That is why herringbone sits comfortably in a squarer room, like a study or a dining room, where there is no single long view to point at.

Both patterns are busier than a plank floor, so they usually go in the rooms meant to be looked at: an entry, a dining room, a study, a primary suite, or the one room in a house of plank floors that changes the rhythm. In a large open plan we often run Riva Arte herringbone in the dining area inside a border of a wider plank in the same colour, so the two floors read as one wood with a change of pace.

Which direction should a herringbone floor run?

Along the longest view, in most rooms. Stand at the main doorway and look at where your eye lands: down a hallway, through to the water, toward the sliders onto the lanai. The spine of the pattern, the line the zigzag or the points run along, usually goes that way.

Then the pattern has to be centred. A herringbone or chevron floor is set out from a centre line, not started against a wall, because walls are rarely straight and a pattern started against one drifts as it crosses the room. With the line on the middle of the doorway or the middle of the room, the pattern lands symmetrically where people see it first, and the cut pieces end up at the walls, under the baseboard and behind the furniture.

Where two rooms open into each other, the centre line is a decision for the whole run, not for each room on its own. We'll walk you through it on your plan before anything is ordered, because once the first boards are down, the layout is fixed.

What changes about the install?

A patterned floor is a different installation from a plank floor, and we quote it as its own job rather than by the square foot of a plank floor. Three things make the difference.

• The layout. The centre line is marked, the pattern is laid out dry to check where it lands at the doorways, and the borders are cut to it.
• The cuts. Every piece that meets a wall, a cabinet run or a doorway is cut to fit, and a pattern leaves more offcuts than a run of long planks.
• The slab. Short pieces show every dip, so the floor has to be flatter than it would for a long plank, and any flattening is done before the wood goes down.

How the boards are fixed, glued or floated, depends on the maker's instructions and on the slab. With Riva engineered wood flooring, the slab's moisture is tested before anything is ordered. That matters more for a pattern than for anything else, because a patterned floor is the one nobody wants to take up.

Can you get a herringbone wood floor in Sarasota and Bradenton?

Yes. Riva Arte is the board in the Riva line proportioned for herringbone: three and a half inches wide and twenty-one and a quarter inches long, a fixed length because a pattern needs every piece the same. It comes in Prime grade only, since a knot or a strong colour swing in one short piece pulls the eye out of the pattern, and in four colours: Pearl, Crystal, Smoke and Earth.

Pearl is the palest colour Riva makes, and Earth, a mid greige, is the darkest of the four. The wear layer is four millimetres of European white oak, enough to be sanded and refinished where it sits, and Riva approves its floors on a slab, so the same herringbone can run across a ground floor and on into a room upstairs. The wider boards that make a border for it are on the Riva Spain engineered hardwood collection.

Chevron in wood needs a board made for it, so it is a conversation to have in the gallery with your plan in hand. The Riva gallery, the second building on our lot in Bradenton, has the collection as full-length planks, with herringbone and chevron laid out on the floor, so you can stand on both patterns before choosing one.

Herringbone and chevron in tile

The same two patterns work in porcelain, on floors, shower walls and backsplashes, and the same rules apply: a centre line, cuts at the edges and a flat surface underneath. A wood-look porcelain in herringbone puts the pattern in a bathroom or a laundry, the rooms where a wood floor does not belong.

In tile, herringbone and chevron add a lot of cuts and a lot of setting-out time compared with tile laid straight. That is one of the reasons a patterned wall and a plain one of the same size are priced differently, and it is set out in what tile installation actually costs. Our own crews do the tile installation as well as the wood, so a herringbone wood floor in the dining room and a herringbone tile wall in the shower can be laid out from the same plan.

Herringbone vs chevron: how to decide

Start with the room. A long room with a view at the end suits chevron, and a squarer room, or one you mostly sit in, suits herringbone. Then the rest of the house: one patterned room among plank floors reads as a choice, and a whole house of pattern can be a lot to live with.

Then judge the colour at full size. A pattern is read as a whole, so a board that looks right as a sample chip can look different once it is repeated across a room. Seeing it laid out on a floor settles the question faster than any description.

Bring a plan or a photo of the room and we'll walk you through where the centre line goes and which pattern suits it. We sell it and we install it, and the crew is ours. Call (941) 253-0400, or send us your plans for a quote.