Duct Tape

How to choose the right duct tape

With a number of different duct tapes to choose from, it's easy to get spoilt for choice. To help you find the right one, we've given all our duct tapes a rating for durability, adhesive strength and clean removal. These ratings can be used as a general guide and to help you compare the performance of every duct tape in our range. 

Durability
We use a combination of tensile strength, cloth content, material thickness and inhouse testing to calculate the durability rating for each of our duct tapes. 1 star being the lowest, and 5 stars being the highest. As we tend not to stock low quality duct tape, you'll rarely find one below 3 stars in our range.

Adhesive Strength 
The adhesive strength rating given to each duct tape comes from the official testing data from our manufacturers. In addition, to help incorporate real world results, we also include customer feedback and inhouse testing in our calculations.

Clean Removal 
That's the big question we're always asked, "will this duct tape leave residue". The honest answer is that it depends on a number of factors. These include the quality of the tape, the adhesive, what you're sticking it to, how long it's down for and the environment it's in. Currently, we use in-house testing to determine this result. In addition, we've recently developed a new 90-day testing plan which we'll be launching in early 2021. This will give a more detailed analysis of how we calculate our ratings and be much for helpful to the user.

We hope you find the above information helpful. It is of course intended only as a general guide and comparison across our own duct tape range. We recommend users determine to suitability of the product themselves before use.

Duct Tape vs Gaffer Tape, what's the difference?

Duct tape is a very general term and its meaning can vary depending where in the world you're from and the industry you're in. Commonly, in the UK, it's used to describe a self-adhesive, polythene-backed tape with an inner cloth weave. The kind of tape you might find in your local DIY store (however, the quality you find does vary). It's often used for general DIY, building, construction, agriculture, in fact we've heard of duct tape being used for a huge variety of applications. Duct tape tends to be versatile, water-resistant, flexible and have a strong adhesive. At GafferTape.com, we only stock professional quality duct tape, all rated and reviewed by our customers.

The term Gaffer Tape is more specific. It's widely used in the professional TV, Film, Theatre and Photography industry. Gaffer tape has a similar makeup to duct tape, but tends to have a much higher cloth content. This can make it more durable and easy to tear by hand. Additionally, as it's designed for use on expensive TV & Film equipment, the adhesive used on gaffer tape, in our experience, is less likely to leave residue. Matt gaffer tape is also available which has a non-reflective finish, making it less visible on-camera. You may also come across spelling variations including gaffa tape and gaff tape. As you may have guessed from our name, Gaffer Tape is what we live and breathe, and we only stock the good stuff.

Thankfully, if you're not sure which one you need, we're here to help and we'd love to hear from you.