EPOXY PAINT COVERAGE AND COLOR GUIDE

Pro Tips To Keep In Mind When Buying Epoxy Paint

When planning on coating your garage or commercial floor with an epoxy floor coating there are a few key things to keep in mind about coverage and colors. Working with epoxy floor paints is not any different than working with conventional paints. Coverage is not an exact science!

When painting walls inside your home everyone understands that lighter colors do not cover as well as darker colors especially if you are painting over an existing darker coating. Same goes for epoxy flooring on your concrete floor. Such as, if you want to use Beige on your garage floor. Our garage floor epoxy is self priming but since Beige is much lighter in color than concrete we strongly recommend that you use the epoxy flooring primer first. If not using the primer order at least 20% extra to apply the epoxy paint thicker to ensure you do not get any concrete bleed through. Off white is another color you need to be careful when ordering. It's a beautiful color but doesn't cover as well as other colors. If using our Commercial or Industrial coating systems you don't have to worry about this since both systems utilize a primer/base coat first and then a pigmented coating over that. So you get two pigmented coatings as compared to one pigmented coating and a clear coating for the garage epoxy kits.

What you will be reading here holds true for any epoxy floor coating you're thinking of buying. Especially if you choose to use a water based epoxy or any epoxy under 10 Mils thick or an epoxy that is not 100% solids. You will have a high risk of concrete bleed through or a finish that has no luster that will look rather pale in comparison to a thick 100% solids based aliphatic epoxy. Why because water based epoxies contain up to 50% of water content so when the water evaporates out of the coating during the curing process you have only about half the amount of paint you started with left on your floor. So you'll have two issues, poor coverage and poor durability!

When ordering epoxy paint please do not try to order to the exact square footage of your floor. Again this goes for any brand of epoxy coating you're going to use and again it's even more so if using a thin mil(less than 100% solids) or water based product. When you buy paint for the walls in your house you don't buy the exact amount of paint you think you need. You always buy a little more with the thought that you don't want to run short and you have a little left over when you're done. The same holds true for epoxy flooring paints. You always want a little leftover. We've had customers not buy our garage epoxy kits because it was rated for 50 or 60 square feet of more coverage than the size of their garage floor. Not the right way to think when going through the time, effort and expense to put a showroom high gloss finish on your garage, commercial or industrial floor.

Concrete is very much like sheet rock sometimes. Have you ever painted a room in your house and then come back after it dried and the paint has disappeared into the sheet rock? The same can happen with some concrete floors. Every concrete floor is different. Some can be very porous or absorbent and take more material than normal to coat. Most floors are not a problem for our thick epoxies but there's always the exception. Our rule of thumb is to have a 10% safety margin of material when buying epoxy paint. This holds true for any concrete floors whether it's for a garage, commercial shop or an industrial production floor.

Another factor that can affect coverage is the texture of the floor. If your floor was finished in a rough broom type finish it will use up more material than normal. So you'll need to plan for that when you make your purchase. Also if your garage or shop has a curb around the perimeter and you want to finish that with the epoxy floor paint keep in mind these curbs will consume a lot more epoxy paint than normal especially if it's block. We recommend taking the square footage of your curb and times it by 1.5 to allow enough of a safety margin when calculating the total square footage of coverage you need to buy for.

As far as colors go Beige & Black which are popular colors should be figured for about 10-15% less coverage or use a primer which we strongly recommend. You will notice some colors are much more expensive than others such as bright red. Customers always ask why is bright red so much more. The reason is that red pigments are much much more expensive than other pigments and to get that really Ferrari bright red look it takes a lot of pigment. Plus contrary to what you may think bright red does not cover very well. So you need more epoxy paint than normal. Same goes for bright white, black and yellow. So part of the extra high cost of bright red and bright white is the pigments but we also provide you with the primer as a standard part of the kit.

When going for the dramatic effect and decide to do a bright white or high gloss black floor just keep in mind that they will show dust and dirt more than other colors. Black and white floors have a very dramatic look to them as long as you're ok with the extra upkeep to keep them clean.

Medium gray will hide the dirt about the best out of all the colors. Light Gray is a beautiful color that is very bright and hides dirt fairly well, not as much as medium gray but pretty good especially if there's a lot of color flake in the floor like we give you with our garage epoxy flooring kits. Unlike a lot of other garage epoxy kits that give you so little in flakes that your floor looks like it has a case of measles or it needs to be washed.

Commercial Epoxy Paint System for Floor

When doing a shop floor whether it's in your garage, basement or commercial setting we recommend not using color flakes. With a color flake floor if you drop a small part or screw on it, it will be very difficult to find. Again that's because we give you a lot of color flakes. You don't have this problem with most other kits because you can barely see the flakes in the floor to begin with. A note on flake floors, you'll notice that we do not offer flakes with our commercial epoxy floor coating system. The reason being is that the commercial epoxy base coat is thinner than our extra thick garage epoxy coating. So if you put flakes into it, the flakes disperse epoxy underneath them leaving an even thinner layer of epoxy on the floor. This thinner layer can cause durability issues in the future. This is one of the main reasons water based, less than 100% solids epoxies and cycloaliphatic epoxies have a high rate of failure. ArmorGarage is all about epoxy flooring durability so this is an acceptable installation method. Plus the commercial system uses two colored coatings for the base coat and the topcoat to get that deep luster looking finish. When using flakes you must use a clear topcoat and not a pigmented one. So it's essential you have the thickest epoxy coating possible when using colored flakes for any floor application. You want as much epoxy paint under the flakes as possible. Good quality flakes are 3-5 mils thick and they don't just sit on the surface, they embed themselves into the wet epoxy. So if you start out with a thin coating you end up with tissue paper thin layer of epoxy paint on your floor under the flakes which leads to a guaranteed failure in the future.

ArmorGarage is here so that you can avoid epoxy floor coating failures. After manufacturing every type of epoxy there is and being one of the largest concrete prep and epoxy floor installation companies in the New York Tri State area. We know exactly what works and what doesn't.

So to sum things up it is ok to have a little epoxy paint left over. You can put the epoxy paint into small baby food size jars and save it as a touch up kit. When ordering keep in mind your floor condition and the color you want. Bright Red, White, Black and Beige will get less coverage as will a rough and or porous floor. If your concerned about the condition of your floor or how much to order just give us a call and we'll be happy to guide you accordingly.
For expert epoxy flooring assistance 866-532-3979 or info@armorgarage.com