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Preparing Concrete Floors for Painting | How to Paint a Concrete Floor | Epoxy Paints

Preparing Concrete Floors for Painting

Painting concrete floors can be a creative way to add appeal to your home. Tiles and wooden floors,and also carpeting used to be the only way to go, but nowadays, stained and patterned concrete floors can be an absolute show-stopper and extremely original.

With a little bit of imagination and clever choice of colour the floors can be stained and glossed to a high shine once painted.

But it is essential to prepare the concrete floor really well before embarking on a project of this nature.

The experts do not have to be called in if a few clever and important steps are taken prior to embarking on painting your concrete floor.

Concrete is primarily used for building and construction, and is a strong but really quite dull- looking material.

How to paint a concrete floor

Before painting a concrete floor, it is important that the surface is properly prepped. It is essential that all the steps necessary for this process are taken, well before the paint is applied.

As with all painting, the preparation is of paramount importance.

Therefore the cleaning and degreasing process is essential for this.

Various chemicals are available from reputable paint and hardware stores for the degreasing process, before embarking on painting your concrete floor

A general all-purpose degreaser can be used, or else you can use a solution of salt and water which is diluted to 1:5.

The concrete floor should be checked if any curing compounds have been used and also if there is moisture in the concrete.

Once these two important steps have been taken the floor should be checked for “hardiness” – if the floor is too hard, then the paint which has been applied won’t stick or adhere.

The floor’s surface should feel like medium rough sand paper, to the touch – this is the ideal surface for the paint to adhere to, making the application of paint to this surface a highly successful one.

If acid etching is used, the floor should be washed prior to painting, by hosing it down and waiting 24 hours for the surface to dry before starting to paint.

The floor is now ready to be painted.

Epoxy paints are best used for the painting of concrete floors.

For a really glossy finish a two compound component can be used.

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