Dance Floor Tape Is Not Gym Floor Tape

Tape is tape is tape, right? Wrong.

Using vinyl tape intended for dance floors on a wooden floor can lead to disaster.

Dance floors are flexible vinyl with no paint or coating on the surface. They can stand up to tapes with aggressive adhesives. The tape can be removed without damaging the floor surface and it can stand up to really hard foot traffic.

Gym floors are different. Wooden gym floors have a sealer on the wood and usually also have painted lines, sometimes on top of the sealer and sometimes under it.

Wooden floors are “dynamic”, meaning that atmospheric conditions can cause the wood to expand or contract and the finish and the painted lines may not change at the same rate that the wood does.

This can impact the bond between the wood and the sealer to the point where using a tape with aggressive adhesive can lead to finish damage when the ape is removed.

If you need to mark a wooden floor, we recommend using only paper tape, never vinyl tape or gaffers tape.