Choosing a paper towel system looks simple until you price it out. In most Canadian offices, schools, restaurants and plants, the real decision comes down to two formats: hardwound roll towels and center-pull towels. Both work in wall-mounted dispensers and both cut the mess and refill work of folded stock. They are not interchangeable, though, and picking the wrong one means buying new hardware or living with a system that does not fit your traffic.
How Each System Works
Hardwound roll towels
A hardwound roll is a tightly wound roll of towel on a core, loaded into a roll dispenser that feeds the towel through a slot by lever, hand turn or sensor. Rolls are long. The Tork Universal Hand Towel Roll in our catalog is 800 ft per roll with six rolls per case, so one case holds 4,800 ft of towel. Pair it with a touchless unit like our White Roll Towel No-Touch Dispenser and visitors get a towel without touching the dispenser at all.
Center-pull towels
A center-pull roll is coreless and pulls from the middle, delivering one sheet at a time through an opening at the bottom of an enclosed dispenser. Hands only touch the sheet they take. The Tork Universal Centrefeed Paper Hand Towels are 2-ply with 530 sheets per roll and six rolls per case, or 3,180 sheets.
Where Each One Wins
- High-traffic washrooms: hardwound rolls are long, so there are fewer refill trips in schools, arenas, plants and busy office floors.
- Hygiene-sensitive spaces: center-pull suits clinics, food prep areas and staff washrooms where one-sheet-at-a-time dispensing matters.
- Hardware: roll dispensers and center-pull dispensers are generally not cross-compatible, so choose the format before you buy the dispenser.
The Cost Picture
At current catalog pricing, the Tork Universal hardwound case works out to about 1.2 cents per foot of towel, and the Tork Universal center-pull case to about 2.0 cents per sheet. Those numbers are not directly comparable, because sheet size and thickness differ and how much people actually pull matters more than the sticker price. Our breakdown of the true cost per use of commercial hand towels shows how to compare formats fairly.
If you are still choosing hardware, start with how to choose a commercial paper towel dispenser. Once the system is in, a washroom restocking checklist keeps it from running empty on a Friday afternoon.
Bottom Line
If your washrooms are busy and you want the fewest refills, look at hardwound roll towels. If you want controlled, one-sheet-at-a-time dispensing, look at center-pull towels. Either way, buy the dispenser and the paper as a matching pair, and browse our dispensers to confirm they fit before you order a full case.
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