Glue Down vs. Floating Luxury Vinyl Flooring

Picking a high-end vinyl flooring product to consist of in your next interior style task is as much about installation and application as it is about design and style aesthetic appeals. After all, if the setup approach you choose is not perfect for its desired application or environment-- the feel and look of the flooring suffers and the lovely vinyl floorings you thought would last a very long time might end up breaking down.

The excellent news is that, depending on the flooring you choose, you essentially have 2 options on how to install your luxury vinyl flooring: glue down vs. drifting. Driving your decision is the fact that each method features its own set of benefits that might make more sense relying on your industry, the setting, and your overall method to your interior decoration task.

To best illustrate the similar qualities of glue down vs. floating installation, let's very first discuss how each method works:

What is Glue Down Vinyl Flooring?



The glue down installation method includes using an adhesive to adhere your dryback luxury vinyl flooring to its base. Using an adhesive develops dimensional stability that ensures the floor covering maintains its natural attributes. The glue down approach includes 2 unique kinds of adhesives: difficult set and pressure delicate.

Hard Set-- Similar to a broadloom carpet adhesive, a difficult set adhesive spreads along the subfloor-- which in turn holds the vinyl floor covering securely in location. This is particularly important for environments within the health care or retail markets that experience heavy rolling traffic such as gurneys and wheelchairs or shopping carts and dollies. As a reasonably new adhesive product to the luxury vinyl flooring market, difficult set adhesive permits your glue down flooring to soak up a heavy point load, which indicates furniture and fixtures are far less likely to leave noticeable imprints when eliminated. Hard set is designed for sheet vinyl, however likewise works well with vinyl tile and plank.

Pressure delicate-- As the long time market requirement, pressure sensitive adhesive enables an installation process that makes your floor covering durable, yet much easier to change. Pressure delicate adhesive is especially fit for the retail and hospitality markets, or those that tend to alter their brand on a continual basis. Pressure delicate adhesive is perfect for vinyl tile and slab floor covering.

Both the difficult set and pressure sensitive adhesive technique involve comparable installation strategies related to spread out rate, which can typically be found in a flooring item's adhesive or setup manual.

What is Floating Vinyl Flooring?



Derived from the laminate floor covering service, the floating flooring classification includes 2 different products with various installation alternatives: loose ordinary vinyl and click vinyl flooring. Drifting flooring was as soon as the go-to installation strategy, approximately 10-15 years back in the property marketplace. This "floating" setup method remains a popular choice today-- particularly for vinyl flooring.

Depending on the type of floating product, drifting installations involve little to no adhesive that can either be set up directly over the subfloor, or using a cushion or vapor barrier system.