Latex gives you 18 to 24 hours. Foil gives you 3 to 5 days on exactly the same half cubic foot of helium. Here is what sets the clock, what runs it down early, and when to inflate so the balloons are alive at the hour that matters.
The clock starts the moment the gas goes in. Everything before that is the part you control.
How long do helium balloons last? An 11 inch latex balloon floats 18 to 24 hours indoors. A standard 18 inch foil balloon floats 3 to 5 days. That gap is the whole answer, and the reason it exists is that those two balloons take exactly the same half cubic foot of helium. You are not choosing how much gas to buy. You are choosing what to put it in.
I fill these at our counter in Thornhill most days of the week, and the conversation is nearly always the same. Someone has a party on Saturday afternoon and wants to know whether they can collect on Friday. The honest answer depends on four decisions, and all four are made before the nozzle ever touches the balloon: what you choose, whether you treat it, when you inflate, and where it ends up sitting.
Get those right and nothing else matters much. Get the first one wrong and no amount of care afterwards will save it.
Key Takeaways
- Latex floats 18 to 24 hours at 11 inches. Foil floats 3 to 5 days at 18 inches. Both use the same half cubic foot of helium.
- Latex leaks through the material itself, because it is porous. Foil is a sealed film, so it only loses gas at the valve and the seams.
- Hi-Float, a coating applied inside latex before filling, takes an 11 inch from under a day to somewhere between one and four weeks.
- Fill foil a day or two ahead if you like. Fill plain latex the morning of, never the night before.
- Hot and humid roughly halves float time, and direct sun is worse. Cold makes foil shrink temporarily, which is physics rather than a leak.
- Helium fill is free at our Thornhill counter on balloons bought with us. For anything that has to last a week, we build it air filled instead.
How Long Do Helium Balloons Last, By Type?
Here is every published figure in one place, on one timeline. Latex times come from the balloon manufacturer, Hi-Float times from the coating manufacturer, and the foil figure is what we actually see on the 18 inch rounds we fill.
Latex float times and helium capacities from the Qualatex helium chart, checked against the current edition in August 2026. Hi-Float figures from Hi-Float's own published table. The 18 inch foil figure is what we observe on the foil we stock and fill at our Thornhill counter. All indoor, at normal room temperature.
| Balloon | Material | Helium used | Float time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11 inch latex heart | Latex | 0.3 cu ft | 8 hours |
| 9 inch latex round | Latex | 0.25 cu ft | 12 to 16 hours |
| 11 inch latex, metallic | Latex | 0.5 cu ft | 16 to 18 hours |
| 11 inch latex, standard | Latex | 0.5 cu ft | 18 to 24 hours |
| 11 inch latex, chrome | Latex | 0.5 cu ft | 22 to 26 hours |
| 16 inch latex round | Latex | 1.5 cu ft | 30 hours or more |
| 18 inch latex round | Latex | 2 cu ft | 36 hours or more |
| 24 inch latex round | Latex | 5 cu ft | 2 to 4 days |
| 18 inch foil round | Foil | 0.5 cu ft | 3 to 5 days |
| 11 inch latex with Hi-Float | Latex with Hi-Float | 0.5 cu ft | 1 to 4 weeks |
Read the two half cubic foot rows against each other and the point of this whole article appears. The 11 inch latex and the 18 inch foil round take an identical amount of gas. The Qualatex helium chart puts both at 484 balloons from a 242 cubic foot cylinder. One of them is finished before lunch the next day. The other is still up on Tuesday.
| 11 inch latex | 18 inch foil round | |
|---|---|---|
| Helium used | 0.5 cu ft | 0.5 cu ft |
| Balloons per 242 cu ft tank | 484 | 484 |
| Float time indoors | 18 to 24 hours | 3 to 5 days |
That comparison is the real answer to how long do helium balloons last: it depends far less on the gas than on what is holding it. One row there surprises people who have been buying latex for years. Chrome finish 11 inch latex floats 22 to 26 hours, longer than the standard colours at 18 to 24, while metallic and pearl finishes are the shortest of the three at 16 to 18. If you are set on 11 inch latex and want the most hours out of it, chrome is the finish to ask for.
Worth knowing that the two manufacturers involved do not perfectly agree. Qualatex, who make the balloon, publish 18 to 24 hours for a standard 11 inch. Hi-Float, who make the coating, quote a wider 12 to 24 hours for the same untreated balloon in their own table. Neither is wrong. Treat the low end as what a warm, busy room actually delivers and the high end as a cool, still one.
Notice too that bigger latex is not better value in float per unit of gas. A 24 inch round latex does last 2 to 4 days, but it swallows 5 cubic feet to get there, ten times what the foil needs.
Why Latex and Foil Fail Completely Differently
Latex leaks through itself. Foil leaks at its edges. That single difference explains every number above.
A latex balloon is natural rubber, and at the molecular scale it is porous. Helium is the second smallest molecule there is, so it does not need a hole to escape, it simply passes through the wall of the balloon steadily from the moment you fill it. Nothing is broken. The balloon is doing what latex does. That is also why a latex balloon does not pop at the end, it sinks slowly and goes wrinkly, because it has been losing gas the entire time.
A foil balloon, properly called a microfoil, is a metallised plastic film that gas does not pass through. It only loses helium at the self sealing valve and along the heat sealed seams, which is a far slower path. That is why foil balloons hold their shape and then fade rather than shrivelling, and it is why a foil balloon can be topped up at a counter days later while a tired latex balloon cannot be rescued.
Foil is also not a single number, and this is where a lot of the conflicting advice online comes from. Three to five days is what we see on the 18 inch rounds we stock and fill, and it is what we tell people at the counter. Qualatex rate their own Suprafoil line as floating for weeks when properly inflated, and put holographic foil at three to five days. So the honest version is a range: any foil comfortably beats any untreated latex, and a premium foil beats it by an order of magnitude rather than a multiple. If a balloon has to survive a week, ask us which foil you are actually buying.
Same gas, same room, different material. The height difference is the helium that already left.
This is also why our shelves look the way they do. Of the roughly 2,500 balloons we hold in stock, the overwhelming majority are foil: our mylar balloons and supershapes, plus the number balloons and letter balloons people come in for. The latex range is deliberately smaller and leans toward packs for garlands rather than singles to float. One thing to check on the label before you buy: the small numeral foils, the 14 inch ones at $3.99, are air fill only and will not lift, while the 34 inch numbers at $17.99 are the ones that float. We stock 65 lines that are explicitly air fill, so it is worth reading the name rather than assuming. Latex has its place, especially in garlands and arches, but if the job is a balloon that has to be floating and beautiful at a specific hour, foil is the honest recommendation almost every time.
Decision Two: Should You Ask for Hi-Float?
Ask for it whenever you need latex specifically and you need it to survive more than a day. Hi-Float is a liquid coating that goes inside the balloon before inflation and dries into a barrier that slows the helium escaping through the latex wall.
The effect is not marginal. Hi-Float's own published float time table puts an untreated 11 inch standard latex at 12 to 24 hours and the same balloon treated at 1 to 4 weeks. A 16 inch round goes from 30 hours to somewhere between 3 and 7 weeks. The Qualatex chart makes the same claim from the other side, stating the coating can extend latex flying times up to 25 times.
Both columns below are Hi-Float's own figures, which is why the untreated numbers here are the wider range rather than the Qualatex ones in the chart above.
| Latex balloon | Untreated | With Hi-Float |
|---|---|---|
| 11 inch standard | 12 to 24 hours | 1 to 4 weeks |
| 11 inch metallic or pearl | 12 to 24 hours | 1 to 3 weeks |
| 16 inch round | 30 hours or more | 3 to 7 weeks |
| 18 inch round | 36 hours or more | 3 to 8 weeks |
| 24 inch round | 2 to 4 days | 4 to 10 weeks |
Two honest caveats before you ask for it on everything. The treated balloon has to dry properly, so this is not a thing we can do while you wait at the counter on a Saturday morning, and it needs to be arranged ahead. And the wide ranges in that table are real: those upper figures assume an indoor, climate controlled room, which is exactly what Hi-Float's guidance says. We treat balloons on request, so mention it when you order rather than when you collect.
Decision Three: When Should You Inflate?
Work backwards from the hour the balloons need to look their best, not forwards from when it is convenient to collect them. This is the decision people get wrong most often, and it is free to get right.
- Foil, 3 to 5 days. Collect one or two days ahead without a second thought. This is the whole reason foil suits a party you are travelling to, or a morning event you cannot shop for on the day.
- Plain latex, 18 to 24 hours. Fill the morning of. A latex balloon inflated at 8pm on Friday for a 2pm Saturday party is already 18 hours old when the first guest arrives, which puts it at the very end of its stated range before anyone has seen it.
- Latex with Hi-Float, 1 to 4 weeks. Arrange it several days ahead. This is the only way to have latex ready well in advance.
- Anything outdoors or in summer heat. Halve whatever the indoor figure says and inflate as late as you possibly can.
The one thing you cannot do is buy time back. There is no topping up a latex balloon, because the gas that left took some of the balloon's stretch with it. Foil is different: a foil balloon that has softened after four days can often be refilled at the counter, which is worth knowing before you throw away a number balloon after a birthday.
Decision Four: Where the Balloon Actually Sits
Temperature and sunlight will take back a large share of whatever float time you started with, and the Qualatex chart says as much in its own footnote, that actual flying times vary with temperature and atmospheric conditions.
Heat and humidity roughly halve it. Hi-Float's guidance is direct on this: balloons typically float for about half as long in hot, humid weather. A GTA backyard party in late July is the worst case in the Canadian calendar for a latex balloon.
Direct sun is worse than heat alone. Sun warms the gas inside, which expands it and stretches the latex, and a stretched balloon leaks faster. It is also how balloons burst at outdoor parties in the early afternoon rather than the evening.
Cold shrinks foil, and it is not a leak. This is the Canadian one worth knowing. Gas contracts as it cools, so a foil balloon carried from a warm shop out to a January street will wrinkle and visibly shrink within a couple of minutes. Bring it into a warm room and it fills back out on its own. Never have a foil balloon topped up while it is cold, because it will be over inflated and at risk of splitting a seam once it warms up. Carry it in the car cabin, not the trunk.
Ceilings, oil and rough surfaces. A balloon resting against a stippled or textured ceiling will abrade and fail early, and anything oily, including sunscreen and cooking residue, degrades latex on contact. If you are floating a bouquet in a kitchen, keep it away from the stove.
The morning after. The latex is on the floor and the foil number has not noticed yet.
What Does Helium Cost in Canada?
At our store, nothing, as long as the balloons came from us. Helium fill is free on balloons bought at our Thornhill counter, so the price you pay is the price on the balloon and there is no separate gas charge to work out.
That changes how you should think about the decision. If the gas is free either way, then the only thing you are trading is the price of the balloon against the hours it will stay up. An 18 inch foil round is $6.99 on our shelf and a 50 pack of 12 inch latex is $8.99, so per balloon the foil costs a great deal more. What the extra money buys is three to five days instead of eighteen hours, on the same half cubic foot of free gas.
Where cost does come back into it is scale. Helium is a finite resource pulled out of natural gas wells, and party balloons are not a rounding error in that. The United States Geological Survey mineral commodity summary for helium puts lifting gas, which is where balloons sit, at 18 percent of American consumption, second only to laboratory and analytical use. There is a Canadian footnote to that as well: Canada supplies 36 percent of American helium imports, behind only Qatar. A large installation drinks it. That 24 inch latex round takes 5 cubic feet where the foil takes 0.5, so a display built from big latex needs ten times the gas of the same number of foil balloons. For anything approaching a full arch or a wall, the honest answer is not to use helium at all.
When to Skip Helium Entirely
Any display that has to last more than a couple of days should be air filled, not helium filled, and most of the balloon work you admire at events already is.
Arches, garlands and backdrops are built on a frame or a strip, so the balloons do not need to float at all. Air filled latex holds its shape for days rather than hours, because the air inside is not escaping at anything like the rate helium does. Our 116 piece balloon arch kit is $29.99, needs no helium whatsoever, and the full DIY versus professional pricing is broken down in our guide to what a balloon arch costs. A hand pump is $14.99 and an electric inflator is $39.99 if you are doing it more than once.
The rule I use at the counter is simple. Helium is for things that must be in the air: bouquets, a number balloon over a cake, a bunch at an entrance. Our guide to birthday party decorations works through exactly that split for a birthday at home. Everything structural is air. That split is the same one running through our four zone guide to event decorations, where the focal wall is built air filled and only the ceiling work uses gas.
Tips From Our Thornhill Counter
Buy foil for anything that matters and latex for anything that is decoration. If there is one balloon in the room that people will photograph, make it foil, and let latex do the volume around it.
Keep the ribbon short indoors. A balloon on a metre of ribbon that drifts into a ceiling fan or a light fitting has a much shorter life than the manufacturer figure suggests, and warm air collects at ceiling height, which does not help either.
Weight everything, and weight it properly. A balloon that escapes is not a float time problem, but it is by far the most common way a helium balloon's life ends early. We sell balloon sticks and cups at $0.49 and curling ribbon at $3.99 for 500 yards, and either beats losing a $17.99 supershape to a car park.
Do not judge a foil balloon in the cold. Every winter someone brings one back to the counter twenty minutes after buying it, convinced it has a leak, when it has simply been outside. Warm it up first and then decide.
Ask us before you buy for a party more than two days out. The answer might be Hi-Float, it might be foil instead of latex, or it might be that you should collect on the day rather than in advance. All three are free advice and they save more parties than any product does.
Balloon Tips, Monthly
One email a month from our Thornhill store on what has landed, what is worth buying early, and how to make it last.
Where Can You Get Balloons Filled With Helium in the GTA?
At our counter on Yonge Street in Thornhill, seven days a week, and the fill is free on balloons bought with us. We are at 7724 Yonge St, ten to twenty minutes from most of Vaughan, Richmond Hill and North York, with parking on site.
How long do helium balloons last is the question we field more than any other at that counter, and the answer we give changes with the date, the hour and whether the party is indoors, which is why it is worth asking us rather than guessing. Two practical notes before you drive out. Call (365) 556-0536 first, especially on a Saturday, and we will have them filled and waiting rather than you queueing behind a birthday order. And bring something to carry them in, or at least fold the back seats down, because a dozen filled balloons take up more of a car than anyone expects and they cannot go in the trunk on a cold day.
If you are pricing a bigger job rather than a bouquet, our install team covers Thornhill, Vaughan and Richmond Hill, and the event design team will quote arches and ceiling work directly. For a party you are building yourself on a budget, the swaps in our guide to affordable party decorations apply to balloons as much as to tableware.
Shop at Party Boutiques
We are an independent party supply store on Yonge Street in Thornhill carrying over 5,000 products, with more than 2,500 balloons in stock and a team that has designed over 200 events across the GTA. If you are not sure what to buy, tell us the date, the hour and whether it is indoors. That is genuinely all we need to give you a straight answer, and it takes about a minute. You can read more about who we are, get in touch, or browse the rest of our balloon guides.
Frequently Asked Questions
An 11 inch latex balloon floats 18 to 24 hours indoors, and a standard 18 inch foil balloon floats 3 to 5 days. Smaller latex is shorter, at 12 to 16 hours for a 9 inch and about 8 hours for an 11 inch latex heart. Bigger latex is longer, with a 24 inch round giving 2 to 4 days. All of those assume normal indoor room temperature.
Roughly three to six times longer on the same amount of helium. An 18 inch round foil and an 11 inch latex both take half a cubic foot of gas, but the latex is down in 18 to 24 hours while the foil is still up 3 to 5 days later. Foil holds gas because it is a sealed plastic film, where latex is porous and leaks helium through the material itself.
Foil can be filled a day or two ahead with no risk. Plain latex should be filled the morning of the party, never the night before, because a balloon inflated at 8pm on Friday is already sagging by the Saturday afternoon it was meant for. Latex treated with Hi-Float can be done days ahead.
Heat speeds up how quickly helium escapes, and Hi-Float's published guidance is that balloons typically float for about half as long in hot, humid conditions. Direct sun is worse again, because it heats the gas and stretches latex until it leaks faster or bursts. Outdoor float times are always shorter than indoor ones.
Hi-Float is a liquid coating put inside a latex balloon before inflation. It dries into a barrier that slows helium escaping, taking an 11 inch latex from 18 to 24 hours up to somewhere between one and four weeks. It is worth it when you need latex specifically, in a particular colour or for a garland, and you need it to survive more than a day. We treat balloons on request at the counter.
We fill at our Thornhill store at 7724 Yonge St, and the fill is free on balloons bought with us. Call (365) 556-0536 before you drive out so we can have them ready, especially on a weekend. We are ten to twenty minutes from most of Vaughan, Richmond Hill and North York.
Yes, and it is not a leak. Gas contracts as it cools, so a foil balloon carried out to a Canadian winter street will visibly wrinkle and shrink within minutes. Bring it back into a warm room and it fills out again on its own. Do not have it topped up while it is cold, because it will be over inflated once it warms up.