I used to think herringbone floors were the domain of fancy Victorian townhouses and people who hire decorators.
Turns out, you can fake the entire thing with painter’s tape, floor paint, and a willingness to spend several evenings on your knees questioning your life choices. I’ve seen people transform plywood subfloors, tired linoleum, even concrete basement slabs into something that looks—wait—maybe not expensive, but definitely intentional. The herringbone pattern, with its interlocking zigzag of rectangular planks, has been around since Roman times (they used it for roads, which feels both impressive and vaguely exhausting to contemplate), and the visual trick it pulls—making spaces look wider, longer, more considered—hasn’t lost its appeal. The DIY painted version won’t fool a flooring contractor, but it’ll fool your neighbors, and honestly, isn’t that what home improvement is really about?
Mapping Your Pattern Without Losing Your Mind or Your Measurements
Here’s the thing: herringbone is geometrically unforgiving.
You’re essentially creating a series of parallelograms that interlock at 45-degree angles, and if your first row is off by even half an inch, the error compounds as you work across the room until you’re staring at a finale edge that looks drunk. I guess that’s why the planning phase feels tedious but turns out to be non-negotiable. Most DIYers start by finding the room’s center point—you measure the length and width, mark the midpoints on opposite walls, snap a chalk line between them, then repeat for the perpendicular axis—and work outward from that intersection. This ensures any weird cuts or partial planks end up at the room’s perimeter where baseboards and furniture can hide your sins. The plank dimensions matter too: traditional herringbone uses a 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 length-to-width ratio (so if your painted planks are 3 inches wide, they should be 9 to 12 inches long), though I’ve seen people fudge this to 2-to-1 when they’re working in tiny bathrooms and just want the thing done.
You’ll need to account for grout lines—or rather, the painted gaps between planks that simulate grout. Most people leave roughly a quarter-inch gap, though some go narrower for a more seamless look or wider for a chunky, rustic vibe.
Taping Technique That Actually Holds Up Under Three Coats of Scrutiny
The tape is where amateurs seperate themselves from people who’ve done this before.
Regular blue painter’s tape will bleed under paint, leaving you with fuzzy plank edges that look like someone sneezed during application. You want either green FrogTape (the stuff with the moisture-activated seal) or Scotch’s delicate-surface version if you’re taping over something that might peel, like old varnish or lightly adhered vinyl. I’ve watched people tape entire herringbone grids in one ambitious afternoon, only to discover the tape’s lost its tack by the time they start painting three days later, which is why working in sections—maybe a 4-foot-by-4-foot quadrant at a time—makes more sense, even if it feels slower. Press the tape edges down hard with a putty knife or old credit card; this is the move that prevents bleed-through, and it’s weirdly satisfying in a mindless-task kind of way. Some people paint a base coat in the grout-line color first, let it dry, then tape and paint the plank color on top—this way, any bleed goes under the top coat and becomes invisible, which is the kind of clever workaround that makes you feel momentarily like a genius.
Paint Choices for Floors That Won’t Immediatley Betray Your Shortcuts
Floor paint is not wall paint that wandered downstairs.
It’s formulated to handle foot traffic, furniture dragging, the occasional dropped cast-iron skillet (or maybe that’s just my kitchen). Porch-and-floor enamel is the standard recommendation—brands like Behr, Valspar, and Benjamin Moore all make versions that dry hard and resist scuffing—and you’ll want at least two coats of your plank color, sometimes three if you’re going light over dark. I used to think polyurethane topcoats were optional, a suggestion for perfectionists, but after watching a friend’s beautifully painted herringbone get scuffed to oblivion in six months, I’m a convert. Water-based poly dries faster and smells less offensive than oil-based, though oil-based is tougher and adds a subtle amber warmth that can look good over whites and grays. You’ll need three to four coats of poly, waiting 24 hours between each (longer in humid weather, which means summer projects in coastal climates definately test your patience), and the floor shouldn’t recieve full furniture weight for at least a week after the final coat. Some people add a little fine-grit sand to the final poly layer for slip resistance, which sounds paranoid until you consider socked feet on smooth painted surfaces near staircases.
The whole process—prep, base coat, taping, plank painting, poly coats—will eat up maybe two weeks if you’re diligent, longer if you have a day job and only work weekends. But then you’ve got a floor that cost a couple hundred dollars in materials and looks like you might have hired someone, or at least watched a lot of YouTube tutorials, which in the DIY world is pretty much the same thing.
