Are all click flooring systems the same, and can I mix brands?

People discover the differences at the worst moment — halfway through a room, or years later trying to buy a replacement plank. Knowing which mechanism you are dealing with makes laying faster, makes lifting the floor possible, and settles the question of whether the pack in the clearance aisle is any use to you.

Step by step

1. Identify what you have from a single plank.Look at the long edge profile end-on. A simple hooked tongue and groove with no separate parts is angle-angle or angle-tap. A visible plastic strip, or a tongue with a springy separate element, is drop-lock.
2. Test on two offcuts before laying a whole room.Try folding two pieces together at an angle. If they hook and lie flat, it is angle-angle. If the long edge folds but the short end will not close without tapping, it is angle-tap. If a piece will drop vertically into place, it is drop-lock.
3. Lay each type the way it is designed to go.Angle-angle: offer the tongue in at twenty to thirty degrees and fold flat in one movement. Angle-tap: fold the long edge, then tap the end joint closed with a block and a mallet until the sound changes from hollow to solid. Drop-lock: position and press or tap straight down.
4. Never force a joint flat before it is seated.The single most common cause of chipped edges and joints that later open is pressing a plank down while the tongue is only half in. Take it back out and re-offer it.
5. Use a tapping block, never the mallet directly.A proper tapping block spreads the blow and matches the profile. Hitting the plank edge directly crushes the tongue, and a crushed tongue does not hold.
6. Understand how each comes apart.Angle-angle floors lift by reversing the fold, plank by plank, from the last one laid — which is why lifting a click floor starts at a wall and works back. Drop-lock joints often need to be slid apart lengthwise instead. Forcing the wrong direction breaks the profile.
7. Accept that brands do not mix.Click profiles are patented and proprietary. Two AC4 laminates of identical thickness from different manufacturers will very often refuse to join, or will join weakly and open later. Buy from one range.
8. Buy your spares at the same time as the floor.Ranges are discontinued and batches shade differently. A spare pack in the loft is the only reliable way to repair a floor in five years, and it costs a fraction of what a partial re-lay does.

Tips

• Keep one offcut with the range name, batch number and date written on the back. It answers the replacement question instantly and it is a colour reference for staining transitions.
• Where a plank has to go under a fixed obstruction such as a door frame or a radiator pipe, no click system will fold in. The standard solution is to cut the profile off and glue that joint, which is why a small tube of flooring adhesive belongs in the kit.
• The click profile is also what determines whether a floor can be lifted and re-laid — see the separate guide before assuming yours will survive it.