Comparing Garage Floor Coverings to Paint

By Gabriel Flores

In modern garages, garage floor coverings are have become fairly popular. Paint is the most comprehensive solution, but there are a lot of reasons why someone might want to, instead, use a garage floor covering. If you are stuck deciding how you want to do your floor, take a look at the different reasons why one would want to pick garage floor coverings instead of paint. Garage floor coverings, for our sake in this article, will include pretty much everything but paint.

Garage Floor Coverings Install Easier

There are two different types of mats: some designed for the whole garage, and some just for certain areas. The ones that are just for certain areas are often called "garage compartment mats", probably to signify that they only cover a particular compartment. Both are a lot easier to install than either paints or tiles. With whole garage floor mats, the mat is typically cut to match the floor of the garage, then laid out. That's it. With compartment mats, you generally cannot cut them, but they come in all sorts of different sizes, and many of them either snap together or lay on top of each other to make a seal. In this way, you could theoretically complete your garage flooring, but that would be very, very expensive, especially compared to an epoxy paint kit that will cost less than $100. Unfortunately, as they are easy for people to move around, they are also easy for car tires to bend and bunch, although there are many that advertise that they are not susceptible to this.

Garage Floor Coverings Are Easily Replaceable

With ease of install also comes easy replaceability. If you damage or stain an epoxy garage floor coating, you're either stuck with it, or sanding it down and replacing it. With a garage floor mat, you just toss it and replace it. Again, convenient, but expensive. The manufacturers of both mats and paint kits seem to feel like their products cannot be stained but, of course, marketing and reality may yield two different results. Tiles can also be easily replaced since you can just pull the ones that get damaged, but the new ones might not match if your garage flooring is a few years old.

Garage Floor Coverings Are Nice To Step On

Epoxy kits claim that they make walking through the garage less jarring, and I'm sure that in comparison to a concrete garage floor, that is true. But garage floor coverings made of thick rubber are going to be a lot better at absorbing shock. This is true whether you're walking around, or laying on them to work. That's not to say you can't get a garage floor mat and set it on top of a painted floor, of course.

Garage Floor Coverings Might Be Cheaper

For many cases, garage floor mats are going to be a cheaper solution. If you are planning to cover your entire floor, right now, and are able to apply a paint kit yourself, then epoxy will be cheaper. In any other case, it will not. Paying someone to apply epoxy is expensive, but there aren't many people that can't throw down a garage floor mat without help. - 21392

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Check out Gabriel's garage floor coverings site for more garage floor information.