Paint Ideas

Are you thinking about painting concrete?

There are different types of concrete paints, stains, and epoxies, and you’ll want to think about what you are painting and what you want to get out of the paint job prior to starting.

The most common, residential applications for painting concrete are:

Interior Concrete:

1. Concrete walls, often referred to as CMU(Concrete Masonry Units) like in many basements.
2. Floors: like garage floors and basement floors

Exterior Concrete:

1. Concrete Foundations, or houses that are made of concrete
2. Concrete walkways, patios, porches, and driveways

Let’s talk about painting concrete walls:

Remember, prepwork is 70% of the quality of the job!

If it is exterior, use a pressure washer, TSP, and bleach to get the surface as clean as possible.

Use a quality “Block Fill Primer” that is designed for Concrete and Masonry surfaces. You will typically need more of this primer, it does not go as far as other primers will, but its thickness will help to seal up the pores of concrete – which is a very porous material.

Use Concrete Patch on big areas that need to be replaced, and caulk cracks with Elastomeric Caulk. Use a backer rod when needed – these are foam strings that look like snakes that you can push into cracks that will help the caulk to have a place to work against.

This beats trying to fill big cracks with 10 tubes of caulk…

Paint the concrete with an elastomeric paint if the budget will allow. Elastomeric paint, is typically not very expensive, but like the primer, does not go as far, so you will need alot of it. Use a professional grade Airless Pump Sprayer to apply the paint.

The next best choice is to use a 100% acrylic paint formulated for concrete and masonry surfaces.

For interior walls – like in a basement, you may need to prep the walls a little bit differently. Moisture coming through the concrete can cause “Efflorescence” which basically turns the concrete to dust. Clean these surfaces well, and use an acid provided by your paint store to help neutralize this. Your paint store will point you in the right direction.

For garage floors – a variety of different paints can be used, however it is generally recommended to use a 2 part epoxy.

These paints are capabale of withholding a lot of traffic. Your truck will be no match for a well epoxied garage floor.

If you do this – you can add the flakes in it to give it a cool look and texture making it have more traction and look really neat.

Finally, there are concrete stains, like H&C makes. These stains penetrate into the concrete, unlike paint, which will create a film on top. Stains will protect concrete, but not in the same way that paint does.

Stains are usually a great choice for sprucing up exterior concrete like around a pool, on a walk way or a concrete driveway.