Garage Floor Covering

Many people today are covering up those ugly concrete garage floors.  Covering your garage floor has many advantages, ranging from the purely functional to the purely aesthetic.  It’s true, you can really spruce up the look of your garage floor by checking out these flooring options.  Installing the right garage floor covering can also increase the overall value of your garage, and thus your house.  Anyway way you look at it, garage flooring is a good option.

However, you might be wondering what the best garage flooring option is.  Basically, you have several major options for covering the garage, specifically, epoxy paint, mats, and tiling.  Let’s look at each option, and talk about their pros and cons.

First, lets look at epoxy.  Garage floor epoxy provides a thick, durable paint surface for your garage floor.  This seals it against moisture, and protects the floor from cracks.  It can also spruce up the look of your  garage floor, as you can get different colors of epoxy paint.  It installs easily, simply by cleaning and treating the garage floor, and painting it on.  After a curing period (usually 24 hours or so), you’ll have a great new floor.  Epoxy floors make cleaning your garage floor a snap, since liquids won’t soak in like they will with concrete.

There are a couple downsides to epoxy flooring, however.  Depending on what type you get, it can be susceptible to damage from certain types of chemicals.  It can also soften up when exposed to high heat, though many epoxy formulas are resistant to this.  However, all epoxy surfaces are somewhat slippery when wet, so you’ll need to watch out for that.

Garage floor mats are simply large vinyl mats that you can roll out to provide yourself with a quick, easy garage floor covering option.  These come in a wide variety of colors, designs, and textures, so you can find something for every need.  These provide great protection for your floor, are quick to install (no waiting for epoxy to cure!), and can be removed if needed.  They are also slip resistant, stain resistant, chemical resistant, and more.

The only real flaws with floor mats are its installation issues for oddly shaped areas, and the difficulty of repairing it.  Imagine you have a workbench or other such permanent protrusion in your garage.  You will have to cut the mat to go around these, which can be a little annoying.  As for the repairs, if you damage a portion of the mat, you’ll either have to make a patch, which can be hard to do cleanly, or replace the entire mat.

If these problems bug you, you might want to check into garage floor tiling.  It has all the advantages and properties of garage floor mats, but in convenient tile form.  Since these tiles are completely modular, you can install them around hard to fit areas, and simply replace damaged tiles individually.  Simply and effective.  This option tends to be a little more expensive then the mats, but for many, the advantages are worth it.

So, I hope this has helped give you some idea of what your options are when it comes to choosing the best garage floor covering for you.  Check out some online dealers to see what your options are, and learn more about how you can transform your garage by installing a great new floor.