While sometimes overlooked, our garages provide many benefits. Besides being a place to park your car, your garage also allows space to tackle projects.
The proper garage floor coatings in Wake Forest can help prevent your garage from taking a beating. Grease, chemical spills, oil, and dirt can quickly wear down concrete slabs, creating cracks and splits.
Many garage floor coatings can help prevent these issues while making your space more aesthetically pleasing. However, some are better than others. This guide explores and compares the different options for garage floor coatings.
What Are the Main Factors to Consider Before Choosing a Garage Floor Coating?
Before detailing specific garage floor coatings options, let’s first review the main factors that should influence your choice:
Visual Appeal
Many property owners install a garage floor coating based on appearance alone. While you should prioritize factors like durability, aesthetics should also influence your choice.
Today, options such as epoxy floor coatings provide many color schemes, designs, and finishes. You can choose solid colors that blend in with the rest of your garage or attractive designs that add contrast. Some coatings even allow interesting designs like decorative patterns or logos.
Overall Durability and Resistance
The right garage floor coating provides protection and resistance against the following:
- Scratches
- Dents
- Cracks
- Spalling
- Chipping
- Chemical spills and stains
- Water damage
- Slips and falls
Some coating options even provide fire resistance, further protecting your home or business. Next-level durability and resistance offer many benefits. The first main benefit is longevity, with many garage floor coatings backed by a 15-year warranty.
Another benefit should be low maintenance, including repairs and general cleaning. Many floor coatings offer excellent dust and dirt resistance, making cleaning a breeze.
Often all that’s required is some sweeping or a mop with hot soapy water. This low maintenance means you won’t need to bother with a power washer or other heavy-duty cleaning tools.
Easy Installation
Some floor coatings you can apply yourself, but some require professional application. For the best results, you should always leave garage floor coating applied to the experts.
Options like polyurea polyaspartic coatings feature rapid installation and curing times. For example, the entire process generally takes a day to finish, while epoxy coatings can take a few days to complete.
The Best Garage Floor Coatings in Wake Forest
Now that you know what to look for, consider the following coating types and their numerous benefits.
DIY Consumer-Grade Epoxy
Two main types of epoxy coatings exist consumer- and industrial-grade. Consumer-grade epoxy comes in DIY kits that you can usually buy at your local hardware store. These kits feature low costs, with many selling between $100 to $150, which is enough to cover a typical garage.
However, the expression “You get what you pay for” applies to these DIY kits. These kits differ from professional coatings, meaning reduced longevity and durability. The leading hurdle DIY enthusiasts face comes from the installation process itself.
The proper application requires etching your concrete floors using powerful acids. Unfortunately, this process is dangerous, time-consuming, and can create many errors.
Some homeowners would spend more time and money correcting their DIY project than they would if they hired a professional team.
Industrial-Grade Epoxy
Industrial-grade epoxy coatings are more potent than DIY kits, using stronger chemicals. These coatings last much longer and provide greater resistance against the elements.
Of course, the fact that a professional team will install your epoxy coating is the main appeal. The installation process includes using a diamond grinder to grind your floor’s surface, letting your epoxy better adhere to your concrete surfaces.
Polyaspartic and Polyurea Coatings
Although polyaspartic and polyurea coatings are newer than epoxy coatings, they’re quickly becoming more popular. While they’re very similar to epoxy coatings, they’re often five times stronger than epoxy.
Alongside outstanding durability and resistance, homeowners also benefit from their fast installation and curing times. The entire process takes less than a day, with many projects only taking a few hours to complete.
Like epoxy, these coatings can become slippery when wet. However, professionals can apply traction material to eliminate these risks. Lastly, polyaspartic and polyurea coatings provide excellent chemical resistance and protection against UV rays.
Get the Best Garage Floor Coatings When You Need Them
Protecting your concrete garage surface requires the best coatings on the market. At TAGG Concrete Coatings, we provide polyurea basecoats with polyaspartic topcoats alongside epoxy coatings for some cases.
Wake Forest, NC, residents, and business owners can call our team today at (919) 439-8879 to explore our garage floor coatings!
