Click-Lock vs Glue-Down: What Our Product Listings Actually Show

Ask three installers whether to click or glue and you will get three answers, each delivered with total confidence. Rather than add a fourth opinion, we counted. Of 118,651 products in the ShopFlooring.ca catalogue, 5,869 list a glue-down installation and 2,498 list click-lock — 8,367 listings where the manufacturer has stated, in its own spec sheet, how the floor is meant to go down.

Those counts describe what the industry supplies, not what is right for your basement. But supply is still information: manufacturers tool up for the method their customers actually buy. Here is what the numbers show, what they cannot show, and how to read them against the subfloor you already have.

What the catalogue actually counts

Every installation method recorded across the catalogue, ranked by how many products list it:

Two cautions before you read anything into that table. First, those rows add up to 20,854 mentions across a catalogue of 118,651 products — the large majority of listings, including most tile, carpet and accessory lines, record no installation method at all. This is a sample of what suppliers choose to publish, not a census of Canadian floors.

Second, click-lock is a kind of floating floor, not its rival. Every click-lock plank floats; a floating floor can also be glueless tongue-and-groove, or a loose-lay held down by nothing but its own mass. Adding those rows together would double-count, so we have not.

Why glue-down leads on supply

Glue-down carries far more listings than click-lock. That gap is not a verdict on which floor is better in a bungalow — it is the commercial market showing up in the data. Adhesive-set floors dominate the jobs that buy flooring by the pallet:

• Large open spans — retail, offices, schools — where a floating floor would need transitions the architect does not want.
• Rolling loads: chairs, carts, pallet jacks, hospital beds.
• Below-grade concrete, where the slab is the substrate and there is nowhere to nail.
• Long or wide boards, which move more and are more likely to be specified with adhesive.

Read the table as a supply picture and it stops being confusing. Click-lock is the homeowner’s method; glue-down is the contract market’s; loose-lay, at 2,996 listings, is a far bigger part of the market than most homeowners realise, because it solves a specific commercial problem well.

What each method asks of you

The honest difference between these methods is not durability. It is what each one demands from the surface underneath and from your weekend.

• Glue-down wants a substrate that is flat, clean, dry and structurally sound, plus a moisture test on concrete, the correct trowel notch, and adhesive bought in the right quantity. It rewards you with a floor that feels solid and silent. It punishes you later: removal is destructive and slow.
• Click-lock wants flatness too — more than most people expect — plus a genuinely straight first row and an expansion gap at every wall, pipe and door jamb. It forgives mistakes in one useful way: you can take it back up.
• Loose-lay wants the flattest, cleanest substrate of the three, and usually a perimeter or spot adhesive. In exchange, a damaged plank lifts out in seconds.

Every manufacturer publishes a flatness tolerance in its installation guide. Read it before you buy, because meeting it is your cost, not theirs — and it is the same cost whichever method you choose.

Where click-lock is the right answer

• You are installing it yourself, in evenings, and want to be able to stop mid-room.
• The floor may need to come up — a rental unit, a condo you might reconfigure, a basement you are not certain about.
• You are going over existing sound tile or vinyl and would rather not demolish it.
• A single plank may need replacing one day, and you would like that to be a twenty-minute job.

Where glue-down is the right answer

• Below-grade concrete, once the slab has been moisture-tested and passes the adhesive maker’s limit.
• Long uninterrupted runs where you do not want a transition strip every so many metres.
• Wide or long planks, which have more surface to move and more leverage on a joint.
• Rooms with heavy south-facing glass, where thermal gain drives daily expansion.
• Anywhere a hollow, drum-like sound underfoot would be unacceptable.

What the price figures do and don’t tell you

Across the flooring lines we list — trims, tools and accessories excluded — the median list price is $194.18 for hardwood, then $121.43 for vinyl, $111.70 for tiles and $63.92 for laminate. Those are per box or per unit as each supplier lists them — not per square foot. A hardwood carton and a laminate carton rarely cover the same area, so comparing those four numbers to each other tells you almost nothing until you divide by the coverage printed on the product page.

We are publishing them anyway because they are the figures most often misread, on this site and every other. The number that decides your budget is dollars per square foot installed, and installation method barely moves the material half of it. What it moves is the other half: adhesive, levelling compound, moisture mitigation and labour hours.

Choosing in five minutes

1. Where is the floor? Below grade on concrete means a moisture test first, then glue-down or a rigid-core floating product rated for it.
2. Will it ever need to come up? If the answer is maybe, choose click-lock or loose-lay and stop deliberating.
3. How long is the run? Past the maximum the manufacturer states, a floating floor needs a transition — or you glue.
4. How flat is the subfloor, measured with a straightedge rather than eyeballed? If you are levelling anyway, glue-down stops looking expensive.
5. Who is installing? If it is you, on a Saturday, with a borrowed mitre saw, click-lock is the answer and there is no shame in it.

For a flat, dry, above-grade room, the cheaper method is usually also the correct one. Where the catalogue’s 5,869 glue-down listings earn their place is the harder half of the housing stock: slabs, basements, big spans and wide boards. If that is your project, budget the adhesive and the levelling now — not on install day.

Shop what this guide covers

• vinyl planks (LVP and SPC) — click-lock rigid core and glue-down LVT, side by side.
• resilient flooring adhesives — the adhesive half of a glue-down budget.
• self-levelling compound — the other half, and the one that gets left off the quote.
• trowels — the notch size is specified by the adhesive, not by the shop.
• underlayment — what a floating floor needs instead.
• Why floor thickness matters less than your subfloor — the flatness tolerance both methods demand.