Concrete Floor Coatings: A Guide to Your Options

Whenever business owners and residents want a high-quality garage floor coating in Northwest Indiana, they call our licensed technicians at Level 10 Coatings. We are the leading provider of cost-efficient and durable garage flooring in Crown Point, with hundreds of commercial and residential customers leaving us five-star reviews on independent websites and online forums. Whether you want a high gloss or matte finish on your garage, basement, or patio concrete coating, we are the business to call.

Every year, our technicians answer hundreds of questions from property owners about what concrete sealer will work best for their property. Some want to protect custom floor tiles from the effects of heavy foot and vehicle traffic, while others wonder about the benefits polyaspartic coatings have over our cheaper epoxy offerings. In this explainer, our flooring experts will outline the different concrete floor coatings to help you identify your ideal solution.

Why Do You Need Concrete Floor Coatings?

Many residents and building managers find out they need a basement, loading bay, and garage floor coating too late. Most of the time, it is when their concrete floors are already scuffed, cracked, and mangled. Concrete, wood, and many other flooring materials are naturally porous, with billions of tiny holes that moisture, mold spores, and chemicals can seep into, leading to structural issues.

A garage floor coating protects a high-traffic area from the effects of hot tire pickup, chemical spills, and oil droplets. It helps car owners maintain their vehicles without worrying about dropping tools on their floors, which might crack them, or spilling brake fluid and battery acid when fixing a leak. We also provide high-quality coatings for business owners who maintain large-scale drive-through areas, vehicle showrooms, and fleet garages, which will deteriorate fast without a floor protectant.

Also, concrete floor coatings reduce the time it takes to sanitize a residential and commercial garage. Without a protectant, you would need to scrub your floors to remove old gum, paint stains, and discoloration. With a high-quality coating, you only need soap, water, and a rag. Our technicians at Level 10 Coatings provide a limited lifetime warranty for our higher-quality coatings, helping our clients ensure their garage floors stay free from delamination, peeling, and stains for decades.

Your Garage Floor Coating Options

According to research from insurance companies, you can find over 276 million registered vehicles in the United States, making garage and driveway coatings a necessity. We serve many clients who park speedboats, RVs, and work trucks on their garage floors, which could sag under the weight when moisture penetration and chemical seepage create integrity issues in the concrete.

Three solutions dominate the garage floor coating market. They serve clients with very different needs, although technicians can install them in combined layers, providing well-rounded protection for various properties.

Epoxy Coating

An epoxy coating combines a polyamine hardener and a plant-derived synthetic resin that chemists call epoxy. The polyamine hardener is a catalyst that cross-links the hydroxyl phenols in epoxy to create a hard-wearing plastic-like coating with a high-gloss finish. Epoxy coatings are economical, long-lasting, and have low volatile organic content, making them the protectant of choice for industrial and commercial properties.

Epoxy coatings have an average lifespan of seven to 20+ years, depending on the foot and vehicle traffic in your garage. They are heat-resistant and waterproof, making them an excellent solution for taxing environments like medical facilities, factories, and auto shops.

Epoxy coatings can prevent most industrial chemicals, like oils, gasses, and transmission fluids, from contacting the concrete substrate for decades. However, they are not UV-stable and will begin to yellow after a few years of exposure to direct sunlight. We recommend that you use them exclusively for indoor applications.

Polyurea Coating

Polyurea coatings are products of the polymerization of diisocyanate and a diamine, which creates a waterproof membrane that can last a lifetime. They are highly elastic, provide unrivaled corrosion protection, and are UV-stable, making them safe for indoor and outdoor use. Also, they offer high-level chemical resistance, repelling rust, acids, and mildew without issue.

A polyurea garage floor coating is self-priming, making it an ideal base coat in a multi-layer application. It can withstand stress and vibrations from an environment with heavy foot and vehicle traffic for many decades. It is also heat-resistant and capable of enduring temperatures between -40 to over 200 degrees Celsius without peeling, melting, or discoloring.

Polyurea takes much less time to cure than epoxy, and technicians from Level 10 Coatings can finish installation in one day. This chemical property allows business owners and residents to use their garages, basements, and patios in less than 24 hours after application. However, misapplication and incorrect installation of design elements will require reapplication, making polyurea a material that only experienced technicians can apply.

Polyaspartic Coatings

Polyaspartic is a variant of polyurea coatings. Some technicians call it aliphatic polyurea. It is a two-component floor protectant impervious to UV rays, abrasions, discoloration, moisture penetration, and corrosion, making them ideal for residential, industrial, and commercial use cases.

Polyaspartic coatings will never discolor under direct sunlight and remain unaffected by torrential rains, snow tires, and impact damage for decades. You can find polyaspartic-coated floors in port facilities, highways, bridges, railcars, and oceangoing ships. They have a 24 to 72-hour curing time, allowing technicians to finish mid to large-scale jobs in less than three days.

Call the Experts to Learn More

Find the perfect garage floor coating for you by calling Level 10 Coatings at (219) 513-4247 and requesting a free consultation with our coating experts.

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