Garage floors have to be tough with everything we put them through. Unfortunately, with all the driving, spilling paint and automotive fluids, and creeping in of environmental elements, sometimes a garage floor can’t take it on its own. That’s where protective epoxy floor coating comes into play. Garage floor coatings can protect your floor from all kinds of hazards, environmental, biological, and mechanical.

The Trouble with Water

Water wreaks a lot of havoc on garage and basement floors every single day. It can seep in from the ground or from overflow after heavy precipitation or even from leaking appliances in the home. Because of their position at the base of the house, basements and garages are in the most danger from water damage.

Excessive moisture in your basement or garage leads to all kinds of problems. These include the growth of mold and mildew, rot and other decay, structural damage to walls and floors, and destruction of personal property. Especially if you use your garage or basement for storage, it is vital to seal the floors to keep water out.

Signs of Moisture Damage

The trouble with basements is that moisture damage often has a chance to progress before a homeowner even knows what’s happening. Take an active role in preventing water damage in your home by installing a protective epoxy floor coating and keeping an eye out for these signs:

• Unusually high humidity levels in the basement
• The smell of damp or rot
• Damp or water-stained walls and floors
• Dripping water or condensation
• Peeling paint
• Other structural damage

Keeping Out Moisture with a Protecting Epoxy Floor Coating

Installing a protective epoxy floor coating is a masterstroke in preventing widespread moisture issues and essentially making a floor waterproof. The sealant blocks water and other liquids from seeping into your naturally porous concrete, from both above and below. Additionally, it is sure not to warp even when in contact with large amounts of water, providing a solid and secure barrier.

Protective epoxy floor coatings cannot reverse moisture damage, but they can prevent it. If your home has already sustained water damage, floors must be completely restored before they can be sealed. Consult with a professional restoration company in addition to your floor coating installation team to make sure dampness or structural damage doesn’t compromise the integrity of your garage floor sealing.

Say Goodbye to Mildew and Mold 

Protective epoxy floor coatings also stave off the growth of harmful microorganisms like mold and mildew. This is partly because keeping out moisture removes one of their favorite growth conditions—damp—from the picture, but that is not the only reason. 

The protective sealant that floor coatings are made from are nutrient poor, meaning they do not provide sufficient food for these microscopic pests to munch on. This alone does a good job of making them mold-resistant, but they even take it one step further. Because they are so easy to clean, without groves or crevices for mildew or mold to nestle into, regular cleaning will easily sweep them away. Literally.

Fending Off Creepy Crawlies

Serving as the closest part of your home to the complicated infrastructure that is underground, a home’s basement and garage are its most likely areas to be entrance points for pests like mice and insects. Preventative measures against these creepy crawlies should begin there, for once they find their way in, it’s usually only a matter of time before they spread throughout the home.

Bugs and rodents usually find their way into a basement or garage through cracks and gaps along the seams of the flooring. Because protective epoxy floor coatings extend several inches up the surrounding walls, the installation process seals off any gaps in the seams between wall and floor. The seamless and nonporous system cuts off all access points for trespassing critters, making your home a safer place.

Minimizing Mechanical Damage

Concrete floors experience mechanical damage from everyday use and the march of time, but protective epoxy floor coatings minimize the damage and prolong a floor’s lifespan. For example, heavy foot traffic and the pressure of vehicles rolling onto and off of a garage floor are cushioned by a thick layer of epoxy.

The highly enduring epoxy coating fares well against temperature fluctuations, high humidity levels and other moisture, corrosive salts used to melt ice, and the harmful effects of solar UV radiation. Left alone, concrete undergoes a process called dusting, in which the material gradually grinds down with contact, creating a fine powder that can exacerbate the effects of asthma and other respiratory problems. Epoxy sealing contains the concrete, preventing the dusting process in the first place.

Other Benefits of Garage Floor Coatings

In addition to protecting your basement floor from moisture, mold, and mice, a good basement floor coating will enhance the floor’s appearance, increasing the overall value of the home, and make it easier to clean. Because they shield concrete and cement from spills, they also block staining, improving the appearance and quality of the concrete itself in addition to the room overall.

Paint is an almost magical tool for altering the appearance of a space. However, not all paints are considered equal. Some are great for giving vintage furniture or cabinets a new look, while others soften out the lighting in a nursery or embolden the hues of a sitting room. While much of this effect boils down to the color, finish also plays a role. Choosing a paint finish can be a bit overwhelming, so here we give a summary of the five main types.

Something About Sheen

Before we dive into choosing a paint finish, let’s discuss what sets them apart. There are two qualities that distinguish one kind of finish from another, and both boil down to the same cause: number of pigments and additives in the paint. Paint is a mixture which includes resins, solvents, additives, and pigments. A higher volume of pigments and additives increases both a paint’s durability and its sheen.

Durability is an easy quality to understand, but sheen is another matter. It is a measure of how much light reflects off of a given paint. This is often interpreted as shininess, though it goes a little further than that. A high sheen can alter how a paint hue appears to the human eye because it reflects more light. For example, a shade of white paint with a flat finish may look duller than the same formula with a finish with a high gloss.

Unfortunately, paint manufacturers do not standardize sheen levels, so one company’s can of satin may be glossier than another’s. Different manufacturers may even call the same kind of finish by different names, so do your research before finally choosing a paint finish. Be sure to test sections of your paint before applying it to an entire surface to make sure the sheen looks the way you want it to in the room.

The 5 Options When Choosing a Paint Finish

Flat or Matte

Flat or matte finishes have the lowest available sheen levels. In fact, depending on the manufacturer, these finishes may even look almost chalky. Because they do not reflect large amounts of light, flat finishes are often used for masking or hiding imperfections, especially in drywall. Unfortunately, because they have the smallest amount of additives, their durability is nothing to write home about. 

Flat finishes tend to wear down more quickly than other finishes, so they are not good for surfaces that experience a lot of contact (like cabinet doors). This makes them difficult to clean since any effort to rub away marks leaves the paint looking smudgy. If your paint gets marked up, you’ll have to repaint the entire wall if you want a smooth surface. If you have small kids or pets to threaten clean walls, consider choosing a paint finish that is hardier than mattes.

Eggshell

Adding in a bit more sheen, eggshell finishes are known for their soft almost velvety appearance. They also soften out any room in which they are applied to the walls. They are still not very hardy, but they are generally a good choice for bedrooms, hallways, family rooms, and entryways.

Satin 

In keeping with luxurious adjectives, satin finishes have been described as almost pearly. Without quite reaching glossy territory, satin finishes reflect a good balance of light, without excessive shine while proving to be quite durable. If you are choosing a paint finish for your bathroom or kitchen, consider satin.

Semi-Gloss

Now we have come to the finishes that are truly shiny. Semi-gloss finishes reflect a lot of light and hold up to vigorous scrubbing. Clean-up is a breeze with semi-gloss finishes, so they are also ideal candidates for kitchens and bathrooms as well as for door trims and baseboards. Many people also choose to use a semi-gloss finish on their ceilings. So elevated, they are great for hiding things like airborne grease and smoke residue.

Gloss or High-Gloss

Gloss or high-gloss finishes are the highest on the sheen and durability scale. These finishes reflect a lot of light. This has the benefit of making a room seem lighter than it is, but any texturing in the painted surface becomes obvious with all the light bouncing around. For this reason, many homeowners enlist professional painting services to apply paint with gloss finishes, since if the paint is not applied perfectly, every errant brushstroke is painfully obvious.

If your goal in choosing a paint finish is to find something that will hold up well against a lot of contact, gloss is the way to go. These finishes are the most durable and hardy. This makes them easy to wipe off and clean, so they are a great fit for high-contact surfaces like doors, trim, and cabinets.

The new year is an exciting time of new resolutions, new decisions, and new trajectories. For many, that dedication to transformation also applies to the paints they apply to their walls and ceilings. We are looking at some dramatically different paint trends for 2023: we are moving away from safe neutrals and toward hues that are rich and inventive.

Maybe people are tired of staring at the same wall color through the pandemic and its residual effects. The color we surround ourselves with affects our mental health, after all. This migration to bolder hues may be an effort to liven things up, to invigorate our minds and enliven our souls. 

The transition to bold colors can be a difficult one to make, and a more daring palette is not for everyone. However, if you think a change is in order, if you want tones that are warmer, richer, bolder, here’s what to expect for the paint trends for 2023.

Warm and Bold—Powerful Reds

Things are looking hot for this coming year, and many of the paint trends for 2023 are either dusky pinks or dramatic reds. Starting off strong, Pantone has selected Viva Magenta as their Color of the Year. This bold pink, the color of a pomegranate, is a burst of pure joy. Put it on your walls to feel empowered and energized, to chase both fear and the seasonal blues away.

Adding in a bit of orange leaves us with Benjamin Moore’s pick: Raspberry Blush. This vibrant coral color is not flashy (okay, maybe just a little bit flashy) and is sure to make any wall pop. The trendy take on terra cotta couples well with brilliant blues, especially if you want to invoke a Mediterranean aesthetic. If you want something a little darker and a little more muted, Alizarin from Graham & Brown is a great choice, subtle and sophisticated and sure to bring warmth and depth to any room. 

The pinks this year are looking dusky. This is not the year for bubbly or sugary sweet tones. The two clear winners are Terra Rosa by Dunn-Edwards and Redend Point by Sherwin-Williams. Terra Rosa is a clear combination of burgundy and just a little beige while Redend Point’s base is a softer blush before the brown is added in.

Either of these beautiful hues work well as statement pieces or grounding neutrals, though Terra Rosa is certainly a bolder choice. These delicate tones will warm up any room’s palette, and both pair nicely with a variety of blues, golds, and whites.

A Bit of Gold

Moving away from the red family, Dulux has made a bold choice in making Wild Wonder their selection for the paint trends for 2023. This paint is a soft ochre, leaning into the gold highlights. The hue is daring in its difference from the others on the list, but on its own, Wild Wonder is really very mild, a tone that invites the outdoors right into your home with a friendly beckon. 

Glorious Greens

On the other side of the spectrum from our reds are the greens, and we have two that are making a triumphant stand this year. Krylon is putting forward Spanish Moss, a true forest green that knows its worth. This color is confident, classy, and couples well with coppers and golds. 

For a bold stroke that is more subtle than overtly sophisticated, consider PPG’s Vining Ivy. This green has a healthy dose of blue mixed in, and the results are tranquil and soothing. 

Nearly Monochrome—Alternatives to Black and White

In keeping with the earthy tones, we don’t recommend using a true cool black in combination with any of the paint trends for 2023. Instead, look for deep earthy violet hues or hauntingly rich chocolate tones. A fathomless green will also do the trick. Choosing an alternative to black will incorporate and even improve on its drama and strength while also shaking up the status quo, adding unexpected layers.

We’ve already touched on some light neutrals to use instead of white, but Behr takes it one step further. It seems they are not ready to let the true neutrals go and have named Blank Canvas as their 2023 Color of the Year. This gentle off-white is a safe bet for those who are reluctant to embrace the other dramatic paint trends for 2023. 

As you play around with 2023’s new paint trends, don’t be afraid to do what feels right for you. Do you want to be bold? Be bold! Are you easing into more striking colors? Take your time. Get creative and don’t be afraid to experiment as you look for the best paint palettes to make your 2023 amazing.