Painting Your Concrete Industrial Floor: Where To Begin

Painting a concrete floor is a simple way to freshen up the look of your industrial facility. Another good reason to paint the floor is to give it protective and anti-slip properties, which improves its safety and durability. Concrete industrial floors require an extra careful approach since they often endure heavy traffic and frequent spillages. If you’ve decided to paint your concrete industrial floor and don’t know where to start, let’s go through the basics.

1) Choosing The Right Paint

The most important part of painting concrete industrial floors is choosing the right paint. The choice of paint depends on where your floor is located, how heavy foot or machine traffic is, and what budget you rely on. Buying paint at DIY store may seem to be a good way to save money. However, such paint won’t last on heavy-traffic concrete. It’s better to consider special concrete paint, such as:

• Epoxy coating – moisture resistant, resists heavy foot traffic, and comes in a variety of colours. A professional-grade epoxy paint should contain at least 70 % solids. This way your coating will last longer.
• Polyurethane coating –UV-stable, better medium for external use. These paints have about 60%-70% solids content. Does not offer the same adhesive properties as an epoxy.

Industrial concrete floors can benefit from a mix of these two paints as well as an anti-slip add-on.

2) Finding The Time

If you are painting a facility which needs to be ready as soon as possible, you need to plan the time carefully. A proper concrete painting job will put your floors out of service for about 48-72 hours. The longer the coating can left to cure before use the longer it will last.

3) Hiring A Professional

Dealing with concrete industrial floors is more complicated than painting a home garage. Working with professional-grade paints requires an expert approach. It’s a good idea to consider hiring a professional instead of trying to save by doing the painting on your own. It’s important to give the contractor extensive information about the floor, such as traffic patterns, floor composition, what the facility is used for, and the chemicals the floor may be exposed to. Based on this information, the professional painters choose the optimum floor preparation method.

4) Preparing The Floor

Expert contractors always pay special attention to preparing the floor for painting. Whether the concrete has never been painted before or is waiting for a touch-up, the steps are similar. It’s important to clean the floors and repair any surface defects, such as cracks and obvious imperfections. Then the old paint needs to be removed. After the paint and coatings are gone, it’s vital to clean and degrease the floor surface, otherwise, the paint may not adhere properly. Then carry out etching in order to make the floor’s roughness similar to medium sandpaper. This helps the paint adhere properly.

Find Out More

At TA paints, we offer a variety of paints for industrial concrete painting. We can also make bespoke paints for special projects. For more information about choosing the right paint, please click here to download our free e-book: The Ultimate Floor Paint Guide.