Just bumping to see if anyone has any thoughts on this. We have a bit more time now because the salesman and the owner are coming out on Monday rather than Friday.

TIA for any advice!

I wouldn't consider it an issue. Our floors (Bruce Dundee)has standard planks in the box that range, in length, from 9 - 84 IN. When we installed them, we tried to place the shorter ones throughout the floor. Some are on the edges, some are in the middle and some are next to another short plank. We tried to use the shorter ones when a cut needed to be made, it was then placed on the edge. Because of the tongue and groove, none of the cut pieces were placed in non-edge positions. If your's are tongue and groove, they probably didn't use cut ones for anything besides edges. The internal short ones come from the company that short.

Here's a picture of one of our bedrooms, you can see shorter planks next to each other and not on the edge.
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There is not industry standard that I am aware of for the quantity of varying lengths in a package of wood flooring. Each manufacturer will have its own formula for what lengths go in a package of their product.

I assume that your floor is prefinished...and that will show poor racking (placement of planks) in a floor...more so than if the floor is an unfinished product that is then finished on site.

Sounds as if the installers did not 'rack' the floor for best visual result. BUT...don't take my assessment as gospel, as I cannot see you floor to make a judgemnent one way or the other. These are just guesses and some information for you.

I'm curious of your outcome. We just started installing hardwood flooring and we're noticing half of the flooring inside the boxes are short planks so we're four boxes into the project and starting to get concerned because we have 1300 square feet of an open floor space.

When mfg box a lot of shorts. It's difficult to rack the floor without having at least two shorts after one another in the same row. Example: short-short-long-short-short-medium etc. You're At the mercy of the mfg. The installer needs to alter the pattern on the following rows. The minimum 6" end joint stagger is the important one.

"Three feet should be absolute minimum length…not average."

OK, says you. But flooring is what it is. There are long pieces it is all in proportion. Also the better mills in the better grades do typically have long length average. Any who this post is 15 years old......................

Long planks as a standard from the manufacturer DO exist - look into Kährs products.

When I saw your comment I was simultaneously excited (what I want DOES exist) & sad (flooring I already bought will be delivered in 2 days).

Sadly, Kahrs does not offer SOLID oak flooring. Happily, people like you are sharing tips! Thank you for the recommendation.

I have the same question. I am actually in the process of installing my own wood flooring ( firstfirst-time) and I was starting to do herringbone when I realized that all of the pieces were all different lengths, In every box, and now I have herringbone started in the middle, and I'm gonna have to just start racking the rest of the floor in some type of mixed length pattern. I have about 30 pieces of long plank left (6'x6") so I was trying to figure out where to place the long planks, mixed throughout the floor or all together in place Like near the hallway entrance. I hope that someone can help me. I've attached a picture

Soooo herringbone should be done with planks that have a length that is always going to be an equal denominations of the width, for instance 4 inch wide plank would give you options of: 16 inch long, 20 inch long, 24 inch long, etc.

So your length needs to be a multiple of the width; highly suggesting taking the width and multiplying it by itself (4” as an example) as the shortest length (4” x 4” = 16” minimum).

Randomized length brings you to the aestetic issue you have now.

Decided to go with a diagonal pattern since herringbone was not possible with the different lengths. However this is easier and I didn't have to do any cutting of the tongue to fit like I would have had to do for the herringbone. Now that I've gotten most of the longer planks in place, the ones around the perimeter is where I will use the varying lengths. Thankfully all of the widths are the same (6 in) and I will have to choose between 1, 3, and 4 foot planks. I may alternate the three to get the best look since I already have zigzags, maybe I should randomly stagger the perimeter. I'm excited to see how's gonna turn out. Any suggestions are welcomed. Thanks.