MODERN EPOXY COATINGs Garage Floors

Benefits of Epoxy Garage Floors

DURABLE AND CHEMICAL RESISTANT

The main reason epoxy flooring is so popular in garage installations is this highly sought-after benefit - its extreme durability. Epoxy flooring offers chemical, resistance to motor oil, gear oil, gasoline, bleach, acids, and even many solvents. Even if vehicle fluids sit on the surface of an epoxy coating for a long period of time they can still be cleaned without staining. Simply put, protective epoxy flooring is a great solution for garages no matter what type of vehicle you’re parking or project you’re working on. 

Further, due to epoxy’s hardness and thickness, it’s extremely resistant to abrasion from commonly used garage items such as metal wheeled tool boxes, floor jacks, and even jack stands. Epoxy flooring has high impact resistance as well, so dropped tools or even heavy free weights (if you’re using your garage as a gym) typically do not chip or otherwise damage an epoxy coating. 

EASY TO CLEAN

Because epoxy floor coatings completely seal the underlying concrete, they’re extremely easy to clean. Remember, this installation was originally intended for serious commercial installations like manufacturing and brewing. Like most other residential concrete floor finishes, epoxy floor coatings have been repurposed from the commercial construction space due to their very high durability. 

In fact, fire station bays remain one of the most common epoxy floor installs. At fire stations, they’re simply hosed off when they need to be cleaned. 

In a residential installation, an epoxy floor coating can be cleaned in a similar way. If it won’t damage adjacent drywall or trim, they can simply be hosed off or even pressure washed when they need to be cleaned. If that’s not an option, a warm mop with a degreaser such as Simple Green will quickly clean the floor.

SLIP-RESISTANT

In epoxy flooring installs, the primary purpose of the broadcast flake is to the increase slip resistance of the epoxy floor coating. In fact, besides their low durability, big-box retail epoxy paint creates a surface that’s dangerously slippery when wet. 

When we broadcast an epoxy flake, it’s applied to rejection, creating a surface with an orange peel texture. This texture increases epoxy flooring slip resistance, especially when wet. The size of the flake used will have a large impact on slip resistance. If you need a floor with very high slip resistance, choosing a medium-sized flake is ideal. Flakes that are too large or too small with both underperform in this aspect. 

GLOSS OR SATIN FINISHES ARE AVAILABLE

For most installations, we suggest polyurethane topcoats over polyaspartic. Many ‘one-day epoxy garage floor’ companies rely on a polyaspartic topcoat because of its very fast cure time, however, it is much more viscous as well, which will reduce the inherent slip-resistant nature of flake epoxy flooring systems. 

Polyurethane topcoats are very thin by nature, which allows us to properly seal the broadcast flakes without sacrificing epoxy floor coating slip resistance. Better yet, polyurethane topcoats are available in both high-gloss and matte finishes, allowing us to have better control of the finished aesthetic. There’s nothing more modern looking than gray epoxy flooring with a matte topcoat. 

FAST INSTALL TIME 

Our standard garage floor epoxy installation time is two days. While there are many companies that offer one-day floors, as we discussed above, they simply do not perform as well. 

Keep in mind that garage floor epoxy installations can fail prematurely if the underlying concrete floor isn't prepped properly, so it’s important that they’re installed professionally. DIY concrete surface prep is rarely sufficient for garage flooring installations.