Are you considering painting your garage floor by adding some colour to the concrete? Promain’s technical team are here to help you find the best garage floor paint that won’t break the bank.
Promain provide a vast range of floor paints suitable for garages. It is often difficult to see the wood for the trees in deciding which garage floor paint is the best for your individual requirements.
Read on to find the best garage floor paint for your application.
Types of Garage Floor Paints
There are a wide range of paint and coating product types suitable for garage floors. These include alkyds, single pack paints, single pack epoxies, two pack epoxies, single and two pack polyurethanes and polyaspartic coatings. We’ll explain the benefits of each type below.
Best Type of Concrete Garage Floor Paint
First of all, it is important to decide what is important to you and your needs. The best garage floor paint for you might not be the same for the next person. Ask yourself some questions:
- What Is My Budget For Garage Floor Paint? Economical or Top of the Range?
- Will Vehicles With Warm Tyres Be Parked In the Garage?
- Does My Garage Floor Need To Be Anti Slip / Anti Skid?
- Does the Garage Floor Have An Existing Coating? What Type of Paint Was Previously Used?
- What Kind of Preparation Am I Prepared To Carry Out?
- Is the Concrete Power Floated / Screed / Tampered / Trowelled ?
- How Old Is the Concrete Flooring?
- What Is the Use Of the Garage Floor?
- Are You After a Specific Colour or Look?
- What Kind of Paints / Coatings Are You Comfortable Using?
Best Garage Floor Paint By Type
Choosing the best paint for your garage floor is important in order to get the greatest results. Make sure you follow all manufacturers’ instructions to insure a successful installation and be sure to pay particular attention to preparation and cleaning your floor properly. Always remember that 80% of the job is the preparation. It is also important to allocate budget for the hiring of tools required to fully prepare the concrete floor ready for coating.
If you follow this advice you should results and a much better looking and longer lasting garage floor.
Introducing Alkyd Paints
Alkyd paints on garage floors are a basic, low budget option. In short, we do not recommend them for garage floors as they are low quality for this purpose. Overtime, tyre marks can be found and after long distance driving, paint can become adhered to tyres and when you leave the garage this paint stays with the tyres – not ideal! From our point of view, if you are going to go through the hassle of cleaning and preparing your garage floor ready for painting, it is best to get a long-term solution that will last. Otherwise what could be a one-off job turns into a long-winded hassle.
| Benefits | Considerations |
| Fast Return To Service | Can only be applied on concrete floors older than 2 years |
| Easy To Apply and Aggregate Can Be Added | Can also be applied on old good adhering coatings |
| Tintable To Most BS and RAL Colours |
Introducing Single Pack Epoxies
Single pack paints are an easy to apply option suitable for general public users with some knowledge of advanced paint coatings.
Concrete floor must be sealed with Rust-Oleum EpoxyShield Sealer 5220 prior to application
| Benefits | Considerations |
| Outstanding resistance to diesel, motor oil, coolant and various household chemicals. | Not As Durable As A 2 Pack Product |
| Designed for light to medium duty workshops | |
| Resistant to tyre lifting or peeling |
Introducing Two Pack Epoxies
Two pack epoxies work by combining two elements together, a base and a hardener, to produce a harder wearing and longer lasting paint. These paints are a professional option ideal for users willing to fully research and carry out a higher degree of preparation prior to application. Users should be aware that once the product is mixed, the length of time available until the product goes hard, known as the pot life, in the tin is an important factor to consider.
PPG SigmaCover 400 (Amerlock) is a high performance, two-pack coating which is suitable for concrete and metal floors as well metel pipes and structual steel.
Formerly known as SigmaCover 640, SigmaCover 400 is a self-priming, universal epoxy which has good adhesion on most coatings. SigmaCover 400 is available in a choice of colours, with a semi-gloss finish.
| Benefits | Considerations |
| Self Priming | High Odour Whilst Applying |
| Suitable For Concrete and Steel | |
| Long Track Record |
2. Rust-Oleum EpoxyShield MAXX 5300
Suitable for medium to heavy traffic.
| Benefits | Considerations |
| Low Cost & Easy To Apply | Available in a limited range of colours |
| Maximum Durability in 1 Coat | Requires to be sealed with Rust-Oleum 5220 Sealer |
| No Primer Required |
Introducing Single Pack Polyurethanes
Polyurethane paints are resins with good properties of adhesion, flexibility, hardness and weathering. Promain offer FLAG PU Floor Paint or the Blackfriar PU Floor Paint. They are all very similar though they are only available in limited colours.
| Benefits | Considerations |
| Low Cost & Easy To Apply | Only available in stock colours |
| Resists oil and grease as well as various other chemical spillages and common liquid spillages | |
| Specially formulated to resist common car leaks such as oil and grease |
Introducing Two Pack Polyurethanes
Two pack PU’s are regularly applied over an epoxy floor coating to provide a colour stable gloss finish that is resistant to high abrasion as well as many chemicals and oils used in garage environments. PU’s are a much thinner film build than epoxy paints so will do hide small defects in the floor. This high resistance to UV and greater colour retention makes 2 pack PU’s ideal for application to showroom floors where colours rather than grey are required. Promain supply a range of water based and solvent based paints from leading manufacturers such as Sika, PPG, Jotun and Sherwin Williams amongst others.
PPG Sigmadur 520 is a 2 pack solvent based polyurethane tintable topcoat, with high UV resistance and colour retention properties, for use on floors and steelwork.
| Benefits | Considerations |
| High UV resistance and colour retention | Ensure to wear suitable PPE |
| Tintable To Most BS, NCS & RAL Colours | |
| Can be used in temperatures down to -5° C |
Introducing Polyaspartic Coatings
Polyaspartic coatings are the most premium garage floor paints available. These formulations are suitable for other internal and external use where protection against traffic or chemicals is needed. Due to the low viscosity, you do not require a primer. You can apply it directly to concrete after preparation. Polyaspartic floor coatings are often very fast curing providing a quick return to service reducing down time whilst painting.
| Benefits | Considerations |
| Strongest protection against traffic and chemicals | Requires expensive preparation |
| Can be bolstered with NS200/NS300 Anti Slip Aggregate | Product is expensive if you compare it to alternatives |
| Can be applied at temperatures as low as -10°C | Available in limited colours |
Regarding Hot Tyre Pick Up
Hot Tyre Pick Up is where a vehicle with hot tyres is park for a period of time on a painted floor, the heat is transferred from the tyres into the paint. The consequence is that the heat softens the paint, the adhesion to the floor is brakes and the paint sticks to the tyres. When you next move your vehicle, bare patches will be left where the tyres had sat – not an ideal situation!
A good quality 2 pack epoxy or PU coating will not suffer from hot tyres where as many single pack garage floor paints will suffer at some point during their lifespan. Although a short term solution, you can reduce hot tyre marks if you park your car on a mat, tyre runners, or some other type of covering such as pieces of old carpet. If you do this, you may prevent the frustration that can develop from this annoying characteristic of cheaper garage floor paint.
In our technical opinion, we would really recommend a better quality garage floor paint such as an epoxy. Epoxies offer a much greater adhesion to concrete. This means the risk of hot tyre pick up is minimal.
Want to find out more about hot tyre pick up? Read our detailed article here.
How Much Garage Floor Paint Do I Need?
Depending on the product and the size of your garage, the quantity you will need will vary. The best way to check the quantity required is to check your decided products Product Data Sheet. You can find all data sheets on our website. On these sheets, you will find the Theoretical Coverage so you can do the maths to decide how many coats you need for your area. Always take into account that when you apply paint to an unpainted porous garage floor we advise that the first coat is dilute around 20%. You should apply this as a primer sealer before applying 2 coats of floor paint.
As a guide, a standard single garage is around 3m x 6m so 18m2.
The minimum size of a double garage is around 5.5m x 5m, so 27.5m2.
Benefits of Painting Your Garage Floor
Painting your garage floor can have a wide range of benefits. For one, if you drop a nut / screw / bolt on the floor it is no longer lost forever, but easily visible! Paint will also stop concrete dusting. Thicker coatings also do a great job of covering minor imperfections such as hairline cracks or defects in the concrete. You can also use aggregate or anti slip products to provide a safe environment for users or standalone tools prone to movement. One advantage with paints and coatings is that your garage floor will be much easier to clean. Also Health and Safety often require walkways or the edge of pits to be highlighted on commercial garage floors.
One of the biggest advantages to garage floor paint is the cost to completely change the look of your garage. When compared to other floor coverings paint is by far the most economical option.
Got a question we haven’t answered about garage floor paint? Give our technical team a call on 01462 421333 to discuss your requirements today.
