Commercial Epoxy Flooring vs Concrete Flooring

One of the biggest arguments or decisions that must be made in commercial settings is the type of flooring that is going to be used for this harsh environment. At the end of the day when the dust settles, typically only two flooring options remain and those two floorings are commercial epoxy flooring and your traditional concrete flooring. Today we are going to outline these two flooring options and stack them up against each other and see how they compare based strictly on how they would perform in the commercial setting. We are going to outline the epoxy flooring first:

In our opinion, epoxy flooring is the superior flooring in this comparison and let us tell you why. Commercial epoxy flooring is one of the most durable flooring options available on the market with the ability to make the actual concrete slab up to 300 percent stronger and last an average of 2-3 times longer than a bare concrete flooring system. With this added durability, your concrete slab will be able to handle extreme use of heavy machinery, the effects of heavy vehicle and foot traffic and even the strength to avert damage from objects dropped on the flooring.

Because epoxy flooring is durable, there cant be many options for customization, right? Well, you should be happy to know that you are not sacrificing strength for beauty because epoxy flooring is as beautiful as it is durable. There is a wide assortment of materials and methods of design that can be used to make the epoxy flooring system one of a kind. There are different colors, an option of multicolored or single colored paint flakes and even the use of metallic pigments to create the stunning metallic epoxy flooring.

Another amazing benefit of epoxy flooring is that the flooring is resistant to almost every chemical you can throw at it, but please don’t throw chemicals at your flooring. This is because epoxy flooring has a thick top layer that won’t allow for any moisture at all to pass through. So, the chemical is isolated on the surface of the flooring for easy removal.

One of the biggest downsides of having a concrete floor installed; we are going to use polished concrete for this example, is that your flooring will not have any strength added to the concrete slab through this process. Concrete flooring is only meant to be used in low to medium traffic areas as the sealer or polish that is applied to the concrete is not rated for heavy traffic in most cases. This means your concrete is still in danger of sustaining damage where epoxy flooring can protect against damage. Concrete floors are also not able to be applied to old or damaged concrete for this exact reason.

While there is a degree of customization to concrete floors, the customization can be underwhelming compared to an epoxy flooring system. There are a wide range of stains and colored powders that are used to create color on the concrete and a few different types of polishes and sealers that can be used to select what sheen is desired but outside of this, there is not much else you can do with a concrete floor.

One of the biggest deciding factors when choosing the flooring is chemical resistant and concrete flooring has no resistance to chemicals whatsoever. The concrete will absorb all chemicals and leak them into the surrounding soil, creating both a structural hazard and an environmental hazard.