The garage floor in a typical American home is usually made of well-troweled and smoothed concrete. Generally, concrete floors are layed down level and very flat and yet still troweled with a slight angle that is pitched towards the door so that water will drain to the outside. Then usually garage floor paint is applied to seal and preserve it. This last step is very important.
Concrete is slightly porous and this can cause problems with maintenance. Cars using the garage will bring the outside in with them. Mud in the spring and salty slush in the winter will begin to work their way into the pores of the concrete floor. This slowly degrades the bond between the molecules of cement that make up its surface. This causes the surface of the floor to begin shedding and flaking material. It becomes rough and sometimes loses whole patches of material, a process called spalling.
To fix such a situation, it might be possible to re-pour your concrete floor. However, pouring a new concrete floor inside of a garage is a difficult procedure. It is also expensive. The solution to this problem is to paint the floor.
There are many types of paint available for use on concrete floors. They must have two very necessary properties. They must bond to the cement surface of the floor. And they must be resistant to wear and abrasion.
The first kind of garage floor paint is that of water-soluble paints. When these are applied in several coats, they leave an impermeable barrier between the floor and the environment. This type of floor paint is very effective. Originally this paing was first used in commercial garages, particularly at car dealerships, to ease the chore of keeping the floor clean and to make the shop look presentable to the customers. Homeowners quickly caught on to the benefits of such a coating. It could seal the floor against damage from water and automotive fluids, saving money and adding value to the home. A side point to keep in mind about this type of garage floor paint is that this treatment has to be delayed until freshly poured concrete is fully cured.
A second type of garage floor coating is from a new generation of floor coatings that are called epoxies. Epoxy resin, when combined with hardener and allowed to cure, forms an extremely hard and durable substance that is used in the manufacture of fiberglass. Epoxy has the additional advantage of being impervious to almost all automotive fluids, including gasoline.
Because of this, it made epoxy paints the obvious choice for the next generation of garage floor paints. Many homeowners consider epoxy coatings the best garage floor paint that is available on the market. It accepts color very well, bonds tightly, and can make a shabby space into a showcase. There are many epoxy coating systems available today. Some even incorporate additional textured materials, making a more attractive and durable finish than has ever been available. You can see an example of this type of coating in the picture in this post.
To find other types of garage floor paint and epoxy garage floor paint coatings, a good place to look are online specialty stores and floor coating retailers. There are almost unlimited choices and quality levels to choose from.