Buying guide
Click vs Glue Down: Which LVT Should You Choose?
Click SPC or glue-down LVT? Subfloor, underfloor heating, water, traffic, design freedom and installed cost compared, with a straight recommendation for each type of room.
The 30-second answer
Choose glue-down LVT
If the floor is going into a kitchen, a wet room, a shop, an office, a big open-plan space, or anywhere with heavy traffic, castors or underfloor heating. It is the more stable floor, it conducts heat better, and it gives you every laying pattern and design option in the range.
Choose click SPC
If you are fitting it yourself, the subfloor is not perfectly flat, you want to walk on it the same day, or the floor may need to come up again. Bedrooms, lounges, rentals and quick refurbishments.
Everything below is why.
What each one actually is
These are two different products that happen to look the same on the floor.
Glue-down LVT, also called dry back, is a flexible vinyl tile or plank bonded to the subfloor with adhesive. It is thin: Daytona is 2mm, and most glue-down floors are 2mm to 2.5mm. Nothing holds the floor together except the adhesive, which is why the adhesive matters as much as the tile does.
Click SPC is a rigid board built on a stone polymer composite core, typically 4mm to 6.5mm thick, with a click locking profile on all four edges and a foam or cork underlay already bonded to the underside. It is a floating floor: it is not attached to the subfloor at all, it holds itself together and rests on top.
The rigid core is the important part. SPC will not flex, will not expand and contract like older click vinyl, and is waterproof through the board.
Side by side
| Glue-down LVT | Click SPC | |
|---|---|---|
| How it is fixed | Bonded to the subfloor with adhesive | Floats, clicks to itself |
| Typical thickness | 2mm to 2.5mm | 4mm to 6.5mm |
| Underlay | None, and none needed | Already attached to every board we sell |
| Adhesive | Required, high-temperature | None |
| Subfloor tolerance | Low, needs flat and dry | Higher, tolerates minor unevenness |
| Fit it yourself | Not recommended | Yes |
| Walk on it | After 24 to 48 hours | Immediately |
| Underfloor heating | Yes, and conducts heat better | Yes, but the attached underlay insulates |
| Wet areas | Best option | Good, with care at the joints |
| Design and laying patterns | Full range: tiles, planks, herringbone, borders, stripping, motifs | Fixed plank or herringbone format only |
| Lifting it later | Permanent | Straightforward |
| Range on our site | 1,077 products | 222 products |
The subfloor usually decides it
This is the factor people skip, and it is the one that causes most of the regret.
Glue-down needs a flat, dry, sound subfloor. Aim for 3mm over a 2m straightedge. At 2mm thick, the tile takes the shape of whatever is underneath it, so every trowel ridge, screw head and dip telegraphs through and shows in raking light. It also needs a moisture test before anything goes down, and usually a smoothing compound. If the subfloor needs work, budget for the work.
Click SPC is more forgiving, but not unlimited. A rigid board bridges small dips rather than following them, so minor unevenness disappears. Push it too far and the board spans a hollow with nothing under it, and the first heavy footfall stresses the click joint until it fails. Most manufacturers allow around 3mm over 1m for click, which is roughly twice the tolerance of glue-down but still not "lay it over anything".
Click can also go straight over an existing sound hard floor, which glue-down usually cannot. On a refurbishment where lifting the old floor is the expensive part, that alone can decide it.
Underfloor heating
Both work over underfloor heating, and both are normally limited to a 27°C surface temperature. Check the individual product spec sheet, because a few ranges differ.
The difference is how much heat actually reaches the room. Glue-down conducts better, because it is thin and fully bonded with no air gap and no foam layer in the way. Thin glue-down vinyl has a thermal resistance close to negligible.
Click SPC has attached underlay, and that layer is there to do the opposite of conducting heat. It is a real insulating layer between your heating and your room. The floor still works, it just takes longer to come up to temperature and costs a little more to run.
If underfloor heating is the primary heat source, glue-down is the better technical choice. If it is comfort heating in a bathroom, either is fine.
Whichever you choose, turn the heating off 48 hours before fitting and bring it back up gradually afterwards.
Water
SPC is waterproof through the core, which people hear as "SPC is the one for bathrooms". It is not quite that simple.
The board is waterproof. The floor is only as waterproof as its joints. A floating floor has a click joint every plank width and an expansion gap around the whole perimeter, and standing water finds both. It runs through, sits underneath where it cannot dry, and the problem shows up as a smell before it shows up as damage.
A glue-down floor is fully bonded with no void underneath. There is nowhere for water to go and nowhere for it to sit. That is why commercial kitchens, wet rooms, changing rooms and clinical spaces are specified glue-down, often with welded seams.
For a domestic bathroom or a utility room, either will cope with normal splashes. For anywhere that gets properly wet, or gets mopped hard every day, use glue-down.
Traffic, castors and heavy loads
A bonded floor does not move. Every tile is held across its whole area, so point loads, office chairs, pallet trucks and kitchen islands have nothing to push against. Adhesives such as UZIN KE 49 HT are rated for castor use to DIN EN 12529 and for wet cleaning regimes, which is what makes glue-down the commercial default.
A floating floor is held only by its own joints and its own weight. Under sustained sideways force it can creep, and the pattern that shows up is joints opening at one end of a room. Heavy fixed items make it worse, because a floating floor needs to be free to move and a kitchen island bolted through it is not letting it.
Never fit units, islands or heavy fixed furniture on top of a floating floor. On a glue-down floor it does not matter.
Room size and thresholds
Floating floors need an expansion gap at every wall and upright, and above a certain run they need an expansion break with a threshold bar. Limits vary by product, but in a long hallway or a big open-plan ground floor you will end up with trims across doorways.
Glue-down has no expansion gap and no maximum run. It goes wall to wall, through doorways, across a whole floorplate, with no break and no trims. In an open-plan space that is a visible difference, not a technical footnote.
Sound
They sound different underfoot and they behave differently for the neighbours.
Click SPC has the attached underlay working for it, so it reduces impact noise reaching the room below. Underfoot it can sound slightly hollow, because there is a resilient layer and an air path under a rigid board.
Glue-down feels solid and dead underfoot, with none of that hollowness, because there is no void at all. It transmits more impact sound downwards unless you bond an acoustic layer in first.
In a flat, check the lease and the building's acoustic requirement before choosing. That requirement, not preference, is usually what settles it.
Design freedom
This is the reason a lot of design-led jobs go glue-down, and it does not show up in a spec comparison.
Glue-down gives you the whole design system. Tiles and planks in multiple sizes, laying patterns including herringbone, chevron, basket weave, brick bond and Versailles, plus stripping between tiles, borders around the edge of a room and motifs in the middle. You can mix colours, mix formats, and set out a floor that is specific to the room.
Click SPC gives you a plank. Or, in a limited number of ranges, a herringbone block. The locking profile fixes the format, so the design is whatever the manufacturer decided to make.
If someone wants a stone floor with grout-style stripping, a bordered hallway, or a herringbone with a feature edge, that is a glue-down job.
Fitting, time and cost
| Glue-down | Click SPC | |
|---|---|---|
| Who fits it | Professional fitter | Competent DIYer or fitter |
| Extra materials | Adhesive, roughly £150 per 14kg tub covering about 42 to 49 m² | None |
| Subfloor prep | Usually needed | Sometimes |
| Room out of use | 24 to 48 hours minimum, full cure 3 days | None |
| Labour cost | Higher | Lower |
| Material cost | Broadly comparable per m² | Broadly comparable per m² |
The material prices are closer than people expect. The real difference is installed cost: glue-down carries adhesive, prep and skilled labour, and click carries almost none of that if you are laying it yourself.
Over a commercial life cycle the maths reverses. A bonded floor that never creeps, never opens a joint and takes a scrubber drier every night lasts longer in service than a floating floor doing the same job, and replacement cost dwarfs installation cost.
Repairs
A common assumption is that click floors are easier to repair because they come apart. In the middle of a room, they are not.
Glue-down: cut out the damaged tile, clean the substrate, bond in a new one. It is a one-tile job and, if you kept offcuts, an invisible one.
Click: to reach a damaged plank in the middle of a floor you either unclick every row back to it from the nearest wall, or cut it out and glue the replacement in, which loses the click joint anyway.
Where click genuinely wins is lifting the whole floor. It comes up clean, in one piece, reusable, in an afternoon. That matters for rentals and for anyone who might change their mind.
So which one?
- KitchenGlue-down
- Bathroom, utility, wet roomGlue-down
- Living room, bedroom, ordinary domesticEither, click if fitting it yourself
- Big open-plan ground floorGlue-down, no thresholds
- Underfloor heating as primary heatGlue-down
- Over an existing sound hard floorClick
- Uneven or awkward subfloorClick
- Rental or short-term letClick
- Shop, office, salon, cafeGlue-down
- Commercial with castors or scrubber driersGlue-down
- Herringbone, borders, stripping or a laying patternGlue-down
- Needs to be walked on todayClick
- First time laying a floor yourselfClick
Common questions
- Is click SPC worse quality than glue-down?
- No. Wear layer is what determines durability, not fixing method, and click SPC runs to the same 0.55mm commercial grade as most glue-down ranges. What differs is behaviour, not quality.
- Do I need underlay with click SPC?
- No. Every click SPC we sell has underlay already bonded to the board. Adding a second layer underneath makes the floor spongy and voids most warranties.
- Do I need underlay with glue-down LVT?
- No. It bonds directly to the prepared subfloor. Underlay would defeat the point.
- Can I glue down a click floor?
- Only where the manufacturer explicitly allows it, usually over underfloor heating, and with the right adhesive. It is not a general-purpose fix for a subfloor that is not flat enough.
- Which is warmer underfoot?
- Click, slightly, because of the attached underlay. Which is why it is also the one that insulates your underfloor heating.
- Which lasts longer?
- On the same wear layer, in a domestic room, they are comparable. In heavy commercial use, glue-down, because it cannot creep or open at a joint.
Still deciding?
Order free samples of both and email us with the room details.