I got tired of hauling a bag of chalk that coats everything in my car with white dust, so I decided to try liquid chalk for a week. This is my honest take on liquid chalk vs dry chalk for bouldering, and after living with both, dry chalk is still the one I reach for at the gym.
There are two parts to this comparison. First the pros and cons of liquid chalk and dry chalk, then a side by side look at the stuff that actually matters day to day like cost, storage, and how fast you can reapply between climbs.
If you don’t want to read the whole thing, here’s the short version. Liquid chalk has only one real con and dry chalk has a few, but dry chalk still wins for bouldering. Keep reading and I’ll show you why.
What is liquid chalk?
Liquid chalk is chalk in a tube, kind of like toothpaste. You squeeze some out and rub it into your hands wherever you want a layer of chalk. Some versions use alcohol that evaporates and leaves a dry layer of chalk behind on your skin.
The chalk I used for this test was FrictionLabs Skin Friendly liquid chalk, which doesn’t have alcohol in it. It’s probably the most popular liquid chalk with climbers, and it gets great reviews online and from everyone I’ve talked to.
Pros of liquid chalk
- Applying it is easy and feels a lot like putting on lotion.
- Once I apply the chalk, I just drop the tube in my pocket, so I never worry about anyone in the gym walking off with it while I’m on the wall. The tube is small and my pockets are big enough that I don’t even notice it while I climb. When I’m not at the gym, I can toss the tube in my climbing bag and nothing gets covered in chalk.
- There’s hardly any waste. Because of the closure, none of it spills if you drop the tube or fall with it in your pocket. That means every bit in the bottle actually ends up on your hands, which stretches the value.
Con of liquid chalk
- Liquid chalk takes time to reapply. I knew that going in, but I didn’t realize how much it would matter while bouldering.
I like to do high reps at low difficulty, so I only spend about 2 minutes per climb and then hop straight onto the next one with no break. With liquid chalk I had two bad choices. Either wait 90 seconds between climbs for the liquid to set into a solid, or climb without reapplying at all.
Skipping the reapply wore my hands out faster and left them too trashed to recover by the next day. That’s a big problem.
Waiting for chalk to dry between climbs is also a workout killer. The whole point of high reps with no breaks is to fatigue your hands quickly, and if I’m resting between every climb, I lose that benefit.
I tried to get around it by only reapplying to my fingers instead of my whole hands. That didn’t work. Just the fingers takes the same time to dry as the whole hand.
I also tried stacking layers so I could get through a few climbs without reapplying. I don’t know what I was thinking. The liquid from the second layer just soaked the dry layer underneath, so I was right back to waiting for everything to dry again.
What is dry chalk?
Dry chalk is the classic climbing chalk, and like liquid chalk it dries out your hands so you can hold onto the holds longer. It comes in a few forms. Block chalk, which you break up before you use it, chunky chalk, which has chunks mixed in, and fine chalk, which is basically powder. If you want to go deeper on the texture question, I broke it down in chunky vs fine climbing chalk.
I like a mix of chunky and fine, so for this comparison I used Black Diamond Black Gold Loose Chalk, which blends fine and chunky chalk with Black Diamond’s own mixture. It’s a highly rated dry chalk and I’ve been climbing on it for over six months.
Pros of dry chalk
- Dry chalk is fast to apply. You dip your hands in the chalk bag, or in my case a chalk bucket, rub them together, and you’re done. It takes a couple of seconds at most.
Cons of dry chalk
- It’s messy and gets on everything. I keep a towel over my chalk bucket in the car because even with the lid closed, every bump in the road sends a little “poof” of chalk out.
- You lose some. I use a bucket that sits on the ground so it’s less likely to tip over or spill while I climb, but it still happens. And if there are kids in the gym, they love dipping into my bucket while I’m on the wall.
- Loose chalk isn’t great for your lungs. I don’t snort or breathe mine in, so it’s never been an issue for me, but it’s a common complaint online. If you’re on the fence about chalk in general, whether you can climb without chalk is worth a read.
Liquid chalk vs dry chalk side by side
If you just count the pros and cons, you might figure liquid chalk is the better product. But the count doesn’t tell the whole story, so let’s put the two next to each other on the things that matter.
Consider cost
You can’t really compare a liquid measurement to a solid one, so this is a tricky one. On top of the math not lining up, you tend to lose more loose chalk than liquid chalk, so factor that in too.
I thought about counting how many applications I could get out of each, but that wouldn’t be dependable. My hands are probably a different size than yours, and it’s hard to apply the same amount every single time.
In case you’re curious about the prices for your own experiment, here you go:
200g of Black Diamond Black Gold Loose Chalk: $19.95
75ml of FrictionLabs Skin Friendly Liquid Chalk: $19.00
Consider storage space
Liquid chalk is dead easy to store and takes up almost no space. If you’re short on room, it’s the obvious winner here, and you don’t have to drape a towel over it to survive the bumps in the road.
Consider reapplying
Reapplying between climbs is what really separates these two for bouldering. Most climbers want to be on the wall as much as possible at the gym, and liquid chalk cuts into that by forcing you to wait.
Bouldering is made up of short problems, so you’re reapplying often. That turns the reapply time into a real con for liquid chalk.
Honestly, this is the one con that makes me feel like I wasted my money on liquid chalk. If you want to dig into which chalk actually performs best, I put together my picks in the best chalk for climbing and bouldering.
And the winner is…
Liquid chalk just doesn’t measure up to dry chalk at the bouldering gym. Reapplying is a huge part of the bouldering experience, and dry chalk is far better at it.
Think about it this way. In the time you spend waiting for liquid chalk to dry, you could have started another climb and be halfway up it already.
If you’re dialing in little things like chalk, you’ll probably enjoy the free Send Edition newsletter. It’s one short climbing drill in your inbox each week that takes about 15 minutes, so you can level up your climbing with 15 minutes of training.
Frequently asked questions
Is liquid chalk or dry chalk better for bouldering?
For bouldering, dry chalk is better. Bouldering is a lot of short problems back to back, so you reapply chalk often, and dry chalk goes on in a couple of seconds. Liquid chalk makes you wait for it to dry between climbs, which kills the pace of a high rep session.
How long does liquid chalk take to dry?
In my testing it took around 90 seconds to set into a solid layer. Reapplying just your fingers takes about the same time as doing your whole hand, and stacking a second layer only rewets the first, so you end up waiting again.
Is dry chalk bad for your lungs?
Loose chalk can create airborne dust, which is a common complaint online. I don’t breathe mine in and it’s never bothered me, but if that worries you, a bucket that stays on the ground and careful application help keep the dust down.
Is liquid chalk worth it at all?
It has real upsides. It’s tidy, easy to store, hard to spill, and stays in your pocket instead of a chalk bucket someone can dip into. If mess and storage are your main concerns, it’s worth a look. For fast paced bouldering, though, the reapply time is the dealbreaker.
