Epoxy Flooring – Your Ultimate Guide With Pros and Cons

(Photos in this post are courtesy of Tough Floors)

Epoxy flooring is one of the most popular and effective industrial-grade floor treatments available today. And while it’s industrial-grade in terms of quality and durability, its versatility really allows epoxy flooring to be used in homes and residential settings as well.

It can be used in both commercial and residential applications to achieve a high level of durability and protection against wear, tear, and chemicals.

Epoxy flooring is incredibly versatile due to its customizable appearance, durability, and anti-slip properties. It can be installed over existing floors or as a stand-alone product to create customized designs.

What is Epoxy Flooring?

Before we deep-dive into the technicalities of epoxy flooring, let’s take a closer look into what it actually consists of, and what made it so widespread and popular, to begin with.

An epoxy floor coating consists of two parts; a base resin (epoxy) and a hardening agent (crosslinker). When applied together it forms a chemical bond resulting in a finish that adheres well to concrete substrates and provides seamless, low-maintenance protection.

Epoxy flooring is a two-compound epoxy (much like the epoxy glue you can buy in any hardware store), that is applied in a thickness of at least two millimeters. An epoxy layer thinner than two millimeters can also be applied to various surfaces – in this case, we don’t refer to the flooring as epoxy flooring, rather we call it epoxy floor coating.

“Seamless flooring is emerging as popular. No longer are people willing to clean grout lines, as there are with tiles”

Euan Bennett, Tough Floors

Be it epoxy flooring or epoxy floor coating, the finished product can also be found in various colors and textures depending on the area’s needs. In addition to aesthetic benefits, epoxied surfaces are highly resistant to common contaminants such as oil, water, dirt, stains, mechanical impacts, UV radiation, chemicals spills, and abrasion giving them significant superiority over traditional coating materials like latex paints.

Epoxied surfaces require minimal day-to-day maintenance for long-lasting results. However, regular deep cleaning is still recommended for optimal performance with professional cleanings done every few years or so as preventative maintenance. Additionally, repainting or recoating should not be necessary if an acceptable amount of care is taken when treating the surface throughout its lifetime.

How to Apply Epoxy Flooring

While there are many people who opt for DIY epoxy flooring, and while all the accessories are available to go it alone, in most case it’s best to rely on professionals who know what they are doing.

“A DIY can become expensive,” warns Euan Bennett, director of epoxy flooring specialist company Tough Floors.  “There are certainly some people who can do a DIY project and have success. For everyone else, the game is too technical. Do they have access to the right preparation equipment? Are they well structured knowing the sequence of events and also why? Have they got the right tooling, mixers, measuring jugs?” he asks.

If you’re anything short of a confident yes for all the questions above, you’re best off bringing in a professional.

As you will see, it is easy to be lost among the number of types and what they are actually good for – especially when you factor in the price as well. Professional installation will cost you roughly $1 – $7 per square foot, and if you ask us, it’s an investment well worth its price.

Epoxy Flooring Pros and Cons

There are, obviously plenty of technical details when it comes to epoxy flooring, but before getting lost in details, let’s see what most people are really interested in: what benefits does epoxy flooring have over other, similar flooring technologies?

Epoxy Floors Are Durable

Epoxy flooring can safely be used in commercial or industrial settings, so it will be extremely durable in normal, residential buildings. It is also low maintenance, especially if you compare it to hardwood floors or carpets.

Epoxy Flooring Design

While epoxy flooring was not developed with design in mind, it is extremely versatile when it comes to customizing it in terms of colors, patterns, and even textures. From solid colors to mimicking textures, painting customized shapes, or picking your gloss level from matte to sparkling sleek, the possibilities for designing your epoxy flooring are virtually infinite.

Some of the more popular opportunities for epoxy flooring design include:

• Color flakes
• Mimicked pebbles or other textures
• Solid colors picked from any color scale, including RAL or Pantone
• Mimicked tiles or hardwood
• Metallic shine, a realistic resemblance of metallic floors
• And a convincing mimicking of marble floors at a fraction of the price

Epoxy Floor Maintenance

The required maintenance (or the lack thereof) really makes epoxy flooring options shine.

Standard cleaning with a mop and general-purpose cleaners will go a long way with epoxy flooring. Unlike hardwood or other floors, no additional treatment is needed to have your epoxy floor fully well-maintained.

And it will not only protect the floor but the underlying concrete substrate as well.

Is Epoxy Flooring Safe?

Perhaps it’s not as spectacular as a mimicked marble surface, but an important consideration for residential flooring is its safety.

Epoxy flooring provides a non-slip surface, that is also much more flexible than tiles or even hardwood. This is great not only when someone falls flat on the ground, but also when fragile objects, like glasses or plates are less likely to break when dropped or when they fall on the ground.

The non-slip characteristic of epoxy can even be improved upon by adding sand onto the wet surface while applying the flooring.

Epoxy Flooring Cost

With all these benefits in mind, it is important to highlight that epoxy is an extremely cost-efficient flooring type. While the actual cost of epoxy flooring can vary on a spectacularly broad range, it is fair to say that the costs involved will be much lower than if you opt for a premium hardwood or marble floor – while you will be able to enjoy all the benefits of those, and some more.

Versatile Epoxy Flooring

Due to its many advantages, epoxy is considered one of the most versatile flooring options, that can be used in commercial settings, in public buildings, such as hospitals or schools, in indoor sports facilities, just as well as in residential settings, and in private homes.

Epoxy Flooring Types

Epoxy flooring comes in a variety of shapes and sizes. While all of the below types have their own, distinctive characteristics, they also all share the basic benefits of epoxy we just discussed so far. But if you are interested in the nuances, or simply want to have a better understanding of which epoxy flooring type is the best fit specifically for you, I invite you to read on!

Flake For Epoxy Floors

Colored flake materials are inserted in the epoxy resin while it’s wet in order to create a unique, characteristic, vibrant, and seamless design. The variation of flakes for epoxy flooring, and the resulting variation of actual floor finishes is literally unlimited.

While these flakes are mostly characteristic of spaces like corridors or garages, the range of colors and flake sizes allow them to be customized for more intimate areas, like living rooms, kitchens, bathrooms or even bedrooms.

Epoxy Self Leveling

Self-leveling epoxy is optimized to be used in spaces where the floors are old, cracked, or damaged: this layer of flooring will create not only a leveled version of the floor but its smoothness and shiny (or matte, depending on personal taste) look will result in a renovated look and feel.

Self-leveling epoxy will create a good-as-new feeling both from a practical and aesthetical point of view. This type of epoxy flooring is most often used in commercial and sports facilities, where redoing the entire flooring would be prohibitively expensive.

Epoxy Terrazzo

This type of epoxy flooring is created with a mix of colored epoxy and selected aggregates (such as marble, granite, pearl, glass, and others).

When the mixture fully sets, the flooring is ground and polished, exposing the aggregate and delivering a smooth, decorative, and hard-wearing floor finish.

The terrazzo look is extremely popular in a wide variety of settings, from commercial shopping mall floorings to balconies or swimming pools, and the epoxy terrazzo technology makes it accessible and affordable, as other, more traditional technologies to create the same look and feel are beyond reach for most, due to their extreme price point.

Epoxy Coated Floor

These solid color options are sometimes referred to as epoxy paint or epoxy floor paint.

As we have covered before, we talk about epoxy coated floors, when the thickness of the epoxy in the flooring is below 2mm. This brings in some of the most definitive characteristics of epoxy flooring, such as easy maintenance and high durability, but on the other hand, provides less versatility when it comes to its design.

Epoxy-coated floors are usually used in areas where foot traffic is expected to be somewhat lighter, and there is no need for real heavy-duty durability. With that said, the number of available colors, and finish glosses still make this option highly versatile, and since there are multiple technologies to apply epoxy coating or epoxy paint to a floor, it’s best to consult a professional before making the actual choice.

Epoxy Mortar

Epoxy mortar is a polymer-based bonding material, that usually consists of epoxy resin, mineral fillers (think: sand, quartz, or coarse aggregate), and one or more additives, that create an unusually strong and impermeable surface.

This flooring option is the most stringent epoxy floor system available, and is extremely durable and long-lasting, even by epoxy’s own standards.

These systems were designed with those areas in mind that require their floors to be resistant to strong chemicals just as well as substantial impacts.

This same solution is used to repair cracks in other types of flooring before applying any other epoxy flooring type for optimal results.

Epoxy mortar floors are most frequently used to cover the floor of mechanical spaces, warehouses, commercial kitchens, restaurants, garages, and manufacturing plants.

Quartz Epoxy Floors

The good thing about mixing up epoxy with quartz is that it improves the floor’s durability, the quartz grains add a non-slip characteristic, and they are exquisite for adding décor and style to the floor.

Its slip-resistant features make quartz epoxy an ideal choice for restrooms, public bathrooms, or swimming pools, while its aesthetics allow it to be used in settings where some kind of design is required, like in hospitals, schools, offices, or showrooms.

Quartz epoxy flooring is extremely popular due to its capability to provide a high-end appearance without the accompanying price tag of a high-end tile or mosaic. It is also much more practical and comes with greater longevity than regular tiles or mosaics.

Quartz epoxy flooring, like many other epoxy systems mentioned above, is available in a number of pre-mixed colors or color combinations, but the system makes it possible and affordable to prepare custom-made designs that match existing pieces, such as rugs, carpets, or furniture.