Garage Floor Tiles

See Them Installed — Garages, Shops, Fire Stations and Power Plants

Every floor below is our solid PVC tile, laid by the customer or their own crew. Click any photo to enlarge.

Tested by the U.S. Army Against RaceDeck and Swisstrax. We Won.

In December 2008 the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit at Fort Benning needed a floor for its weapons test range — a high-visibility area that takes weapons-cleaning solvents and caustic cleaners every day, heavy vehicle and foot traffic, weapon discharges, large static loads and constant impacts. They brought in tiles from RaceDeck, Swisstrax, Lowe's, Home Depot and a regional flooring dealer and ran them all side by side.

Their procurement report says it plainly: our Heavy Duty T-Joint tile was "the only product tested that will maintain a professional appearance and hold up to the extensive wear and tear generated in the weapons test facility." They bought ours. Seventeen years later it's still the same tile, made the same way, and it's the one we'd put under your truck.

Source: Fort Benning Procurement Report, U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit, 09 December 2008. Full document shown here.

Click the report to enlarge

Why We Only Make Solid PVC Tiles (and Not Rigid Plastic)

Most garage tiles you'll see — RaceDeck, Swisstrax, the big-box house brands — are rigid polypropylene with a hollow, ribbed underside. They're light and cheap to ship, and that's where the advantages end. Rigid tile sits on top of your concrete instead of conforming to it, so every high spot becomes a pressure point: the tile rocks, the pegs fatigue, and a floor jack or a dropped wrench finds the weak spot. The hollow ribs amplify sound into the click-clack every rigid-tile owner complains about, and in a cold garage polypropylene gets brittle.

Ours is a solid slab of PVC, edge to edge, top to bottom. Solid PVC flexes to follow the slab, so the load spreads across the whole tile instead of a few ribs — that's how a 1/4" tile ends up rated for fully loaded fire engines. It deadens sound instead of broadcasting it. It bridges cracks and divots up to 3" wide without a repair. It shrugs off battery acid, gasoline, oil, brake fluid, road salt and every cleaner in your garage, it's mold- and mildew-proof, and it's self-extinguishing. And because the tile is solid, there's nothing to dent: a tool chest or a lift can sit in one spot for years and roll off without leaving a mark.

You'll pay a bit more per square foot than hollow tile. You'll buy it once.

Tiles, Epoxy or Mats — Which One Do You Actually Want?

We make all three, so we have no reason to steer you wrong. Garage floor epoxy is the toughest, longest-lasting finish you can put on sound concrete and costs the least per square foot — but it needs a properly prepped slab, a dry weekend and a couple of days off the floor. Roll-out mats go down in an hour and are the fastest fix for a single parking bay.

Tiles are the answer when you don’t want to touch the concrete. Every coating — ours included — needs the slab prepped: grind or etch, degrease, patch, dry, cure, stay off it for a couple of days. Tiles skip all of it. Sweep the floor, snap them together and park on them the same afternoon, no matter how stained, pitted or cracked the slab underneath looks. Tiles are also the pick when you want a pattern or a two‑tone layout, when you rent or move often (you can opt to pull them up and take them with you), if you somehow manage to do the almost impossible and damge a tile by lets say dropping an engine block on it you can simply replace the damaged tile, you should have a few spares leftover from the installation but if you don't just give us a call and we'll send you out replacements at no charge.

Still undecided? Our epoxy vs. tiles vs. mats comparison walks through cost, lifespan and prep for all three.

Planning and Ordering Your Tile Floor

• Measure the floor, not the tile. We sell by the square foot, so multiply length by width, add 5% for cuts, and enter that number. A two-car garage is typically 400–480 sq ft; a two-and-a-half car is 550–650.
• Wall-to-wall or parking pad? Wall-to-wall gives you the finished look and seals the perimeter. A parking pad under each vehicle costs less and still catches the drips — just add ramp edges on all four sides so nothing catches a toe.
• Ramp edges at every door. Use the light duty male ramp edge for the diamond tiles, the Heavy Duty edge sold in 12' lengths for everything else.
• Adhesive only where it earns its keep. Most garages and commercial installations float free. Glue the first three rows at a sunlit or open-ended bay with a good construction adhesive like LockTight for garage applications, use our adhesive in commercial or industrial installations, and glue the full floor for heavy forklift traffic aisles and service bays where vehicles roll in constantly in one direction and brake and or turn hard.
• Pick a pattern you'll live with. Gray and black ship in days. Checkerboards, borders and brand colors are built to order — give yourself 6–8 weeks and call us to lay it out; we'll do the tile count for you.

Installing Garage Floor Tiles in an Afternoon

1. Sweep. That's the floor prep. No grinding, etching, patching or drying.
2. Start at the garage door with a full row across the opening. Work front to back so your cuts land at the side and back walls where nobody looks. If you end up with very small spaces at each side wall shift the row to one side so that you have one larger cut to make rather than two tiny slivers.
3. Snap tiles together with a rubber mallet. The continuous T-joint locks on all four sides, so the floor can't creep, bunch or open a seam under a turning tire.
4. Cut with any power saw. A circular saw with a sharp wood blade makes clean straight cuts; a jigsaw is the trick for door jambs and drains. Floor drains can be tiled over with a circular cut-out to fit over the drain plate, the cut-out can be drilled through to allow water to pass through the tile.
5. Set the ramp edge. Trim the front-row tabs, run a bead of construction adhesive, press the ramp edge in.
6. Seal it before the first car. One coat of Hillway Direct Plus Cleaner & Maintainer keeps tire antioxidants from marking the surface and makes clean-up a simple damp mop job.

Surfaces, Colors and Patterns

Coin is the classic raised-disc garage look that provides extra grip. Textured flat (orange peel) is what we recommend under rolling tool chests, creepers and floor jacks — nothing to catch a caster and the textured finish provides good anti-slip resistance. Slate gives you the depth of a natural stone floor with a concealed seam, and the Hidden Seam has a textured finish and very thin seams like real tile grout lines that looks almost like a monolithic block across a big open floor.

Stock colors cover the grays, black, red, blues and tans; the full chart is on each product page. Because every tile is solid color all the way through, a scratch or a gouge never shows a different color underneath — the big difference between solid PVC and a tile with only a thin surface finish.

Garage Floor Tile Questions, Answered

Why Buy Your Tile Floor From Us

Before ArmorGarage sold a single kit online, we were one of the largest floor-installation companies in the New York metro area, and that's still who answers the phone. Every rep here has laid this tile in a garage, a dealership and a plant, so when you call about a floor drain, a lift footprint or a two-color border, you get an installer's answer in two minutes, not a script.

The tile is made in the USA, it's the same product the Army picked over every name brand, and it carries a lifetime guarantee that transfers with your house. Orders over $1,500 ship free by liftgate truck straight to your driveway, gray and black go out within days, and if we think you're about to buy more tile than you need, we'll tell you.