Paint and coatings
Is a floor coating the same as garage floor paint?
Garage floor paint dries as a thin skin on the surface, a coating is a bonded film with real thickness, and the difference shows up first under a tire.
The short version
- Paint sits on the surface. A coating keys into the concrete and builds thickness.
- Paint is usually a single thin layer. A coating is a system of layers.
- Paint is generally sold to go over an etched floor. A coating goes over a ground floor.
- Warm tires are where floor paint usually lets go first in a garage.
- Clear View Surface Solutions publishes that the slab is diamond ground before anything goes down.
What the two products are
Garage floor paint is a coating in the loose sense of the word, but in the trade the word means something thinner. It is usually a latex or a one-part epoxy paint that rolls on like wall paint and dries as a skin over the concrete.
A floor coating is a resin system that goes down in layers and builds real thickness on the slab. You can feel the edge of it where it stops at a door opening. It is not concrete with color in it and it is not a skin over the top, it is a separate material bonded to the slab.
What happens under a tire
A vehicle that has been driven comes home with warm tires, and the rubber sits in the same place while it cools. Warm rubber softens what is under it and grips as it cools down, and a thin paint film is the easy thing for it to take. It comes up in the shape of the tire and leaves bare concrete showing through.
Thickness is most of what stands up to that, along with the bond underneath it. A coating with a proper topcoat has enough film to take the pull and enough grip on the concrete to stay put. It is also why a coating handles a shovel edge, a dropped socket and a jack stand differently than paint does.
Why the prep is different
Paint is usually sold to go over concrete that has been cleaned and chemically etched. Etching opens the surface a little, and on an older, softer slab it opens it enough to work with. On the hard-troweled floor most newer garages have, it barely does anything, and the paint is left holding on to a smooth surface.
A coating gets a mechanical profile instead. The top skin of the slab comes off with a grinder and the dust comes off the floor while that happens, and what is left is an open surface with somewhere for the resin to key into. That is more work and more machinery, and it is the reason the two products behave the way they do.
It also decides what the next job looks like. Paint that has failed has to come off before a coating can go down, because a new film is only as stuck as the layer under it.