# Wear layer depth is the number everyone publishes and nobody can check > Depth is the wear layer figure every product page leads with. What the layer is made of, and how it did in an abrasion test, are published far less often. Source: https://flooringcompared.com/notes/wear-layer-depth Documents last read: 2026-11-09 Depth is a dimension, not a performance. It says how much clear material sits above the print, and nothing at all about how that material behaves when a chair is dragged across it. A wear layer is the transparent film on top of a vinyl plank. The pattern underneath it is a photograph; the layer is what stands between that photograph and the room. Its depth is quoted in mils, thousandths of an inch. It is the number that leads almost every product page, every showroom conversation and every comparison table on the consumer web. Depth is also routinely confused with the plank’s overall thickness, which is quoted in millimeters and describes something else entirely: the core, which governs how the floor sits over an uneven subfloor, not how it wears. A thick plank with a shallow wear layer will show traffic before a thin plank with a deep one. ## What the release shows Every one of the 16 products on this site declares how deep its wear layer is. Nine products say what that layer is made of. Two products publish a laboratory abrasion result for it. The depth figure is also the least discriminating of the three. 13 products in this release carry the same declared depth, which means that on the column most shops lead with, most of the market is a tie. The column that would break the tie, meaning how the layer behaved under a rotating abrader, is published for two products. Seven products publish the depth and nothing else about the layer: no chemistry, no abrasion result. For those, the depth is the whole of what the maker is willing to say, and it should be read as the thinner promise it is. *The three things a maker can publish about a wear layer: how deep it is, what it is made of, and how it did in a laboratory abrasion test.* | Product | Wear layer depth | What the layer is | ASTM D4060 abrasion | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Bruce LifeSeal Classic | 12 mil (0.3048 mm) | urethane finish; no wear-layer reinforcement named | no declaration | | Bruce LifeSeal Trending | 20 mil (0.508 mm) | urethane finish; no wear-layer reinforcement named | no declaration | | Ambient SPC Rigid Core 7x48 | 20 mil (0.508 mm) | vinyl | no declaration | | Cali Longboards 9x71 | 20 mil (0.508 mm) | no declaration | no declaration | | COREtec Pro Enhanced 7x48 | 20 mil (0.508 mm) | no declaration | not collected | | COREtec Pro Premium 9x72 | 20 mil (0.508 mm) | no declaration | not collected | | Karndean Korlok Select 5.87x23.46 | 20 mil (0.508 mm) | K-Guard+ PU coating | 36,000 cycles | | Karndean Korlok Select 8.86x55.91 | 20 mil (0.508 mm) | K-Guard+ PU coating | 36,000 cycles | | Mannington ADURA Rigid 6x48 | 20 mil (0.508 mm) | urethane with ScratchResist and Microban antimicrobial protection | no declaration | | Mannington ADURA Rigid 7x48 | 20 mil (0.508 mm) | urethane with ScratchResist and Microban antimicrobial protection | no declaration | | MSI Andover 7x48 | 20 mil (0.508 mm) | not collected | no declaration | | MSI Cyrus 7x48 | 12 mil (0.3048 mm) | CrystaLux | no declaration | | MSI Prescott 7x48 | 20 mil (0.508 mm) | CrystaLux Ultra | no declaration | | MSI XL Cyrus 9x60 | 12 mil (0.3048 mm) | not collected | no declaration | | Tarkett ProGen 12x24 | 20 mil (0.508 mm) | no declaration | no declaration | | Tarkett ProGen 7x60 | 20 mil (0.508 mm) | no declaration | no declaration | ## Why depth alone decides so little Two wear layers of equal depth are not equally durable if one carries a reinforced coating and the other carries a plain urethane finish. Manufacturers know this, which is why the ones that treat their layers give the treatment a name and put it on the sell sheet. The name is a marketing term, not a specification. Nothing obliges a maker to say what is in the coating, or to test it against anything. But it is at least a statement that something is there. The check that would settle it exists. A rotating abrader run against a sample under a stated load, for a stated number of cycles, produces a figure that can be compared between products. It is a laboratory test, it costs money, and its result is published for very few of the products here. Where it is published, the cycle count is printed beside the depth. Where it is not, the depth stands alone and should be read as the weaker claim it is. ## What this note does not settle This note does not say that a deeper wear layer is no better than a shallow one. All else equal it is, and all else is sometimes equal. What it says is that all else is usually unknown, and that a column of depths, ranked, presents unknowns as a ranking. The three columns also leave out the finish itself as a separate layer, gloss retention, and the resistance of the print film to light. Those are named in the warranty exclusions rather than in the specification, and the exclusions are published per product and compared on the exclusion matrix. [The fields that decide how a floor wears](https://flooringcompared.com/choose) · [what a wear layer figure means](https://flooringcompared.com/fields) · [the other notes](https://flooringcompared.com/notes) --- Every figure on this site is a manufacturer’s published declaration, reproduced with a link to the document it came from. Quote it with its citation and its condition: a maximum run without its declared unit, or a slip figure without its test method, is not the fact. --- This reference is compiled and published by **the operator of this site**, a materials-only flooring retailer in the United States. It sells the category it describes here. No brand pays for inclusion and no brand is ranked; no figure attributed to a manufacturer is the operator’s own measurement, and each is reproduced with the document it came from. The counts and coverage figures are this reference’s own arithmetic over those declarations. The operator sells flooring materials. It does not sell or arrange fitting, and this site publishes no labor figures and no offers. Page views are counted with Google Analytics, along with how long each page stays in view. There is no filter, no form and no comparison box on this site. Nothing a reader could type into. [What is counted](/about#measurement). [Methodology](https://flooringcompared.com/methodology) · [Field dictionary](https://flooringcompared.com/fields) · [JSON](https://flooringcompared.com/data/spec-v1.json) · [llms.txt](https://flooringcompared.com/llms.txt) · [Privacy](https://flooringcompared.com/privacy) Documents last read 9 November 2026. This release carries 16 published products across 8 brands.