The garage floor is an area that is often overlooked. However, a floor coating is essential to maintaining a high-quality garage floor that looks good and is safe to use. You can use a vast range of products on a garage floor – from alkyds to polyurethane coatings. It’s essential to research the best product for your space and apply it correctly.
Preparation is half the battle with painting a garage floor. Thick coatings of product do a brilliant job at hiding imperfections, like cracks and concrete defects. For garage floor painting, epoxy is a particularly great choice. It’s durable and cleans up easily. The most important part of the painting process is ensuring that the concrete is properly cleaned and prepped before application. By thoroughly cleaning the surface, it will help increase adhesion and durability of the paint job in the long run.
Here are a few options you could use to coat your garage floor.
Epoxy paint
The most effective floor paint for your garage is definitely epoxy paint. Epoxy is made up of two components with resins, hardener, minerals and coloured additives. Once cured, epoxy will make your flooring easy to clean, dust-free, and corrects any minor floor imperfections.
The surface will be ready to walk on in 72 hours. It’s fast-drying and extremely durable- making it perfect for garage floors that come into contact with a lot of activity. The only downside of epoxy is that it is tricky to work with. The hardening part of the solution leaves you with little time to apply the product compared to paint products. You also need to make sure your surface is super clean before applying the epoxy.
Polyurethane paint
Polyurethane is similar to epoxy but is a little less opaque. It has a glossy effect to make your floor look like it’s just been washed and clean – win, win!
Polyurethane paint has many benefits, including adhesion, hardness, flexibility and weathering. Polyurethane is far thinner than epoxy paints, so it will only hide minor cracks on your floor.
Alkyd-urethane paint
If you’re after colour, alkyd-urethane paint is the one for you. There are countless colours available, and alkyd-urethane paint tends to be on the more affordable end of the scale. Typically, this product is not recommended for long-term garage floors which come in to contact with tyres. After a while, tyre marks can show up on the paint or paint can become stuck to the tyres of your car.
While more affordable at first, alkyd-urethane paint can cause you more hassle in the long run.
Acrylic paint
Acrylic paint is not very resistant to impact and abrasion from vehicle wheels. Acrylic is not recommended for garage floors as it has a tendency to flake over time.
So, epoxy and polyurethane paint seem to be the best options for coating your garage floor. Opt for a durable and long-wearing paint to make sure all of your hard work in preparing, cleaning and covering the floor is worth it in the long run.
