A buyer’s guide to garage flooring, including paint and other finishes, epoxy, tile grids, and vinyl mats.
If you want to create a pleasant, clean garage environment, start by finishing the floor. Most residential garage floors are unfinished concrete, which accumulates dirt and stains, is difficult to sweep clean, and kicks up dust whenever you walk or work on it.
Garage flooring options all have their pros and cons. They range from just adequate to incredibly high end, and as you might imagine their cost varies accordingly.If you choose any type of paint, sealer, or epoxy, proper preparation is an absolute must—including cleaning and etching the concrete surface with muriatic acid.
Paints & Finishes
Liquid floor finishes are easily applied to a garage floor with a simple paint roller or paintbrush, straight from the can, and are the most inexpensive option. They bond to the concrete surface while filling small cracks and open pores, creating a smooth surface that makes sweeping or mopping up less of a chore and finding dropped items less of a challenge.
Concrete sealers are usually clear acrylic or polyurethane. Floor paints may be oil-based, modified acrylic, or water (latex) based. A minimum of two coats is required to ensure coverage, but, because raw concrete is porous and tends to suck up finishes, especially first coats, you may need to buy and apply more.
Surface finishes on concrete are problematic. They look great at first, but both paints and sealers wear off over time, and they wear unevenly. They also can be very slippery when wet. Sand may be sprinkled onto a wet finish to offset this, but it will wear away before long.
Another big problem with most floor paint is that a car’s hot tires will lift it right off the floor, no matter how well the paint is applied (or what the paint manufacturer claims). Solvents also attack most types of paint, and in a garage much of what is spilled usually contains some type of solvent.
Finally, if your garage floor has a water problem—that is, if water seeps up through cracks or mysteriously appears under items left lying around—surface finishes are probably not a good option for you. The hydrostatic pressure that forces underground water up through the floor will also prevent the finish from adhering.
EpoxyIf you can imagine a paint for your garage floor that bonds like it’s welded to the surface; resists oils, acids, and just about anything else spilled on it; always looks like new and never wears off, you’re probably thinking of epoxy. These finishes have been around for years, but epoxy is notoriously difficult to mix and apply, so in the past you were better off hiring a pro to do it.
Today, there are do-it-yourself epoxy floor finish kits that are much easier to work with, and they offer an affordable alternative to lower-cost floor paints and expensive tiles.
You still have to mix in a catalyst and work quickly to prevent the material from drying before you complete the job, but the process is more forgiving and the results are just as professional looking.
Epoxy floor finish kits include plastic grit particles that are sprinkled onto the wet finish to prevent slipperiness; these particles generally last longer and perform better (and look more attractive) than sand additives. As with paints and sealers, preparation of the concrete floor is all important to ensure a permanent finish.
Tile Grids
For a showroom-finish garage floor, vinyl and aluminum tile systems are also available. Most of these tiles link or snap together, so they’re easy to install, allowing you to create patterns using different colors or rearrange or remove them altogether as you wish.
Tile systems are expensive, particularly those made of aluminum, but they create a more resilient, and certainly more attractive, floor underfoot than bare concrete, and as a result they are favored by car hobbyists and anyone else who spends considerable amounts of time in the garage.
Tiles come in several varieties. Some are solid surfaced while others have an open, lattice-like pattern. Most are 3/8- to 1/2-inch thick. Contrasting or matching beveled edge strips provide a finished look. The top-of-the-line aluminum tiles are typically metal laminated to a plastic base.
Vinyl Mats
The latest in garage floor finishing is roll-out vinyl floor mats. Much like the resilient flooring used in kitchens, the mats are available in 8-foot-wide rolls up to 36 feet in length.
Three 8-by-24-foot rolls will cover a typical double (two bay) garage floor. According to Gladiator Garage Works, which introduced this product in 2007, once the mats are installed they will not creep, tear or wrinkle in normal use, even under the weight of automobiles.
There is always the possibility that water can become trapped beneath the mat, or that insects will take up residence underneath it. Edges, especially those facing the garage doors, also could be vulnerable to curling and casual damage.
Gladiator claims that a bead of silicone applied under the edges prevents the mats from lifting and keeps water from seeping in.
