Is It Safe and Smart to Paint Concrete Flooring?

Concrete has been one of oldest construction material available and used in construction. In the beginning concrete was used as it is, which was as basic construction material. However over the years there have been tremendous improvements in concrete material and its application. Nowadays, concrete also play important role aesthetic applications. Therefore, when concrete is being used for aesthetic application, the original grayish color of the concrete is no more acceptable by the end users. This is when the new era of concrete started, which is to color the concrete.

As for the topic of this article "Is it safe and smart to paint concrete floor?". Concrete floor is an area in our building or house that will subject to higher direct contact compared to other elements in the building or house. Therefore, this would result in higher abrasion which leads to faster wear and tear. Even though this does not have overnight, but it will sure happen.

In my point of view, it is neither safe nor smart to paint the concrete floor. Touching on the safety part, the paint is normally will result in very smooth and glossy surface, which makes the surface very slippery. By putting this on the floor, is like pouring a cup of oil on the floor and asking someone to step on it. Furthermore, as I mentioned earlier, the direct contact of human or object to the floor is much higher, and this would result in the paint surface to wear off very fast. So, this becomes not so smart way as well to apply paint to concrete floor.

However, there are other ways to color your concrete floor. The safe and smart is by using color pigments in your concrete mix during the mixing stage. By doing this, the whole concrete mix is homogeneously colored. Using this type concrete for your flooring will result in much safer and smarter concrete floor.

Pigmenting the concrete mix is a subject by itself. I will discuss about it in my next articles. If you need any other information, please e-mail me.

About this Author

Arreshvhina Narayanan has been involved in concrete technology field for over 10 years, with two-third of the time was invested in Research and Development. I would like to share my knowledge in concrete technology with others who has same interest. I also welcome any comments and suggestion that will improve my knowledge in this field. You'll be able to access more articles and news related to concrete technology at http://www.pavingmalaysia.com

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