I'm planning on replacing the carpets in all our first floor bedrooms with laminate flooring, and have been going round in circles regarding the direction the planks should be laid. Please see attached floorplans, showing two different proposals. My understanding is that general wisdom suggests planks should be laid towards the main light source. The windows in the bedrooms are north and south facing, so I plan on laying the planks in this direction. The first floor landing has a south facing window, which - following the same logic - should have planks laid in the same direction as the bedrooms (north/south - top floorplan image). But aesthetically I feel that the planks on the landing should maybe actually run horizontally (east/west) (see bottom floorplan image) rather than vertically (north/south), especially when considering coming up the stairs - I think planks going across, and matching the same direction as the stair steps would look better. So I'm torn knowing what approach to take. It seems sensible to keep all planks across the first floor running in the same direction, but the landing has made me question this. NB: I also plan on leaving a gap at the doors (to fit threshold bars) so any configuration is possible, in theory.
Any opinions on which direction I should go in?
