Sooner or later, every homeowner feels the need to replace their old flooring with something fresher and more exciting. Carpeting, however, isn’t particularly practical outside of bedrooms, and luxurious hardwoods and natural stone can be eye-wateringly expensive. If your base flooring is concrete though, you may already have the ideal solution underfoot: decorative concrete.
A primed, coated, and sealed concrete floor can add a level of lavishness to any floor space, regardless of what it’s being used for. Foyers, hallways, and other common areas are among the principal venues where decorative concrete will stand out like no other type of floor treatment; but it’s also the perfect aesthetic for hobby and entertainment rooms, kitchens, and even family and living rooms where rich flooring will make the space twice as inviting.
You won’t find a lovelier or more exhilarating way to revive your entire living space. And you also won’t find one that produces the same fantastic results or coverage, at even a fraction of the cost.
Concrete Coatings Add Beauty and Value to Your Home
Make no mistake: floor renovations are one of the most striking improvements that can be made to any home; and one-of-a-kind decorative concrete coatings are an excellent way to transform your aged or worn floors into hard-wearing, uniquely stylized surfaces that can hold their lustre for decades. Even garage floors, and outdoor areas like patios, decks, and walkways can benefit from decorative coatings, giving them the same aura of distinction and quality that’s found inside your home.
Decorative coatings have three major advantages over convention floor coverings:
- They cost less. With installation, traditional floor coverings can sometimes cost hundreds of dollars per m², whereas a 6-liter container of even the highest quality epoxy coating can cover up to 10m² for as little as 1/10 the price.
- They last longer. Traditional floor coverings not only wear out, they can also chip and crack. Decorative concrete floor coatings, which can be used on any type of sedimentary substrate, are formulated to resist surface damage, and to be easy to repair if any visible damage occurs.
- They’re protective. Because of their resin content, decorative floor coatings form an essential seal for your home’s base against incursion from water or moisture that could lead to undetected growth of mold or mildew, or rapid foundation degradation.
The fact is, decorative floor coatings not only add an air of exclusivity to your home, they help to safeguard its foundation: an attribute that ordinary floor covers like carpets and tiles don’t even begin to address. Ultimately, coatings are able to make a compelling contribution to the value of your home; and it’s one that you can expect to capitalize on if you decide to sell it.
Epoxy Flooring is the Cost Saving Alternative for Professional Floors
Although your home is likely to be the first place you’d think of to apply a decorative concrete coating, it’s also the ideal treatment for any high-use area where a durable, good-looking floor can be advantageous, including:
- Open or compartmented office environments;
- Reception rooms and conference areas; and,
- Commercial kitchens, canteens, and cafeterias.
Hard wearing decorative concrete epoxy coatings make perfect sense for workspaces and businesses where heavy foot traffic, spills, and frequently dropped utensils can take a costly toll on both the floor, and people’s impressions about their environment. Carpets require daily vacuuming and periodic shampooing, and even expensive tiles and hardwoods don’t wear well under heavy prolonged use.
Concrete coatings don’t stain or crack, and are all but completely scratch resistant. Beyond an ordinary cleaning schedule and occasional resealing, professional establishments aren’t burdened with costly cleaning, maintenance, or replacement expenses with concrete coatings. That makes them the perfect floor covering that employers, employees, and patrons alike will be impressed by.
Choose the Type of Decorative Coating That’s Right For You
The range of available decorative concrete floor coating treatments is immense, and it’s their uniqueness that contributes so significantly to the scale of that range. Multiple types of floor coatings can be combined to produce one-off coverings that are completely unique from any other, allowing you to push the boundary on both creativity and functionality.
The sky’s really the limit when it comes to the choices of colours, textures, and finishes, and among the most popular types of concrete coatings and treatments, you’ll find:
- Epoxy coatings. Epoxy floor coatings are formulated to make concrete floors impervious to the abuse of heavy wear and high traffic, as well as impermeable to stains, spills, and chemicals.
- Tints and stains. When used with a concrete resurfacing compound, the use of various pigments and colours will not only invigorate the look of an aging concrete surface, but easily extend both its useful range and scope. They can even be added to epoxy coatings to create fully individualized coverings.
- Stencils and textures. Using stencils to add surface texture when resurfacing a concrete base is one of the quickest and easiest ways to add dimension to an existing surface. This process can also be combined with tinting and epoxy coating to make a floor covering for an office or hallway that’s unlike any other.
And regardless of the type of treatment, there’s no great change between the application processes. Beginning with the removal of any existing coverings from the concrete base, it can either be patched or levelled if necessary, and then the coating applied. The process itself is quick, but it yields long-lasting results.
The Final Word
At the end of the day, regardless of the reason why you’re thinking about replacing your floor covering, it’s important to remember that you don’t genuinely have to replace it all. Your home’s foundation is capable of providing an amazingly sumptuous floor surface, but it needs the right treatment.
One-of-a-kind decorative concrete coatings make it possible to add breathtaking aesthetic value to your floors at a fraction of what a less durable, and less versatile covering would cost. It’s a lovely way to show just how special your home really is.