
Identifying and Solving Flooring Issuesįloor leveling is a fairly straightforward DIY project. While you might not notice lippage on 2-inch-square tiles if the floor is out of plane, large format tiles such as 8-inch-by-48-inch planks designed to mimic real wood can develop a sizable lip at one end of a plank. When the edge of one tile will often sit higher than the edge of the adjacent tile, it forms a “lip.” The undesirable effect is more pronounced with larger tiles. Since ceramic tile won’t bend to fit a wavy floor, it can suffer from lippage. For example, laminate planks can pull apart, and gaps can appear between hardwood planks. If an inflexible flooring is installed over a substrate that dips or heaves, various things can go wrong. While some types of flooring like vinyl may be a bit more forgiving when it comes to slight variations in the flatness of the subfloor, rigid materials require more diligence in prep work. Each type of flooring has specific characteristics that affect installation, and some require more finicky prep work to make sure the finished floor looks great.
LVL FLOORING HOW TO
What type of flooring are you installing?īefore getting started with how to level a subfloor, it’s important to consider the type of finished floor that will be installed over it.

Keep reading to learn what you need to know about how to level a floor before taking on this project. The process of fixing both an out-of-level and an out-of-plane floor is simply known as leveling a floor. While being out of level doesn’t need to be remedied, any low or high points need to be fixed so that the surface is “in plane” and flat before installing rigid flooring. Common in older houses, slightly sloping floors often worry homeowners who want to install new rigid flooring materials, such as laminate, ceramic tile, or hardwood.Ī sloping floor can be a result of the floor being out of level, or the floor can be sagging somewhere in the middle.

Successfully installing new finished flooring typically requires knowing how to level a floor.
