Garage Floor Upgrades

The living room gets all the attention – centerpiece furniture, bay windows, accent walls, hardwood or tile floors. These are all questions to be considered when creating the entryway to your home through which visitors will walk. But what about your entryway, workshop or exercise room, the garage? Garage floors tend to be concrete slabs and they are often neglected, abused and forgotten. No other floor in your home bears quite the same burden as your garage floor – cars going in and out, oil stains, dropped tools, equipment rolling around on it.

Upgrading your garage flooring to both protect the floor and enhance the visual appeal of your garage can be done in a few ways. The first step is to determine how your garage will be used most often. Is it where you park your car and other vehicles?  If so, the flooring needs will be different from a garage used most often as a workshop or rec room. If your garage is used for different functions, you may have to choose a floor that is idea for the primary function but a little lacking for the others.

What’s the Use?

If the primary purpose of your garage is to be the place in which you park your car, using an epoxy to upgrade your garage flooring is the ideal way to go. Available in different formulations, epoxy floors are waterproof, easy to clean and do not degrade when exposed to oil and other petroleum products. Epoxy floor is rolled or painted on to existing floor and can be done in a variety of patterns and colors.

The other garage flooring upgrades are not as vehicle friendly but can provide more utility if you use your garage as a workspace or recreation room. Rubber mats can be rolled out and cut to fit before being adhered to the underlying concrete. This gives you some cushioning and hides the concrete. A slightly more involved upgrade uses interlocking tiles, either hard plastic or soft rubber, to create a flooring surface easier to work on.