What Is The Best Garage Floor Coating?: 3 Top Choices

“What is the best garage floor coating?” 

Most homeowners who have any concept of the future have found themselves asking this at some point. 

That’s because they have a concept of the future, like we just said. 

They’re thinking about how their garage floor (like the rest of their house) is going to hold up over time. That might be because they intend to sell the house at some point in the future. 

Or it might be because they just want things to remain in peak condition for as long as possible while they’re living there. 

It might even be because they are unsure whether or not they want to sell their house in the future, but they want to have the option if they feel like doing that later. 

Whatever the reason for asking, the answer to “What is the best garage floor coating?” depends largely upon a few particular factors.

*Note: While we keep saying “homeowner,” all of this stuff also applies equally to anyone running a business, like an auto shop, storage facility, or warehouse.

What Are These Factors?

It would be too generic and cliché to just say that “it depends on the person. 

And that wouldn’t really give you any actual information. So… 

Where Do You Live?

Yes, really. 

Different parts of the country (and the world) have different local climates and conditions. 

For example, if you live in Phoenix, Arizona, you probably don’t need to worry about snow. 

Likewise, if you live in Missoula, Montana, hurricanes are probably not at the top of your list of weather concerns. 

If you live in a very wet place, like Florida, you’re going to want a coating that’s highly water-resistant. 

And if you live in a place that gets a lot of cold and snow for a large part of the year, like Minnesota (where we are), you’ll want a coating that is water-resistant and can also hold up to significant changes in temperature and the melting of snow/ice on its surface. 

You can apply this same line of thought to whatever climate or altitude zone you happen to be in.

What Are You Using Your Garage For?

We sort of hinted at this already, but different people will be using their garages for different things. 

If you’re a regular homeowner, you might only be using it as a place to park your car(s) and maybe a small workshop. 

But if you’re running an auto repair shop, a warehouse, or some other kind of business, your needs may be different. 

In that case, you might need a floor coating that’s more resistant to things like chemical spills or abrasions. 

By contrast, if you’re a normal homeowner and your garage is just residential, you won’t necessarily need the most heavy-duty (read: expensive) coating in existence. 

How Much Are You Looking to Spend?

A lot of people ask, “What is the best garage floor coating?” but not as many ask the necessary follow-up question: “What garage floor coating can I afford?” 

As with so many other things related to home improvement, more features generally translate into higher costs. 

So, a basic coating will be cheaper than an industrial-level one that is resistant to all the things and is also reinforced with an additional layer of another coating. 

However, while that particular solution might provide the most protection available, it will be more expensive than the basic coating, and it will almost certainly be more than what a typical homeowner is going to need in their garage. 

If you’re a homeowner, that probably means you, unless you’re planning to do some Dexter’s Laboratory-type stuff in your garage. 

The Rule: Spend what you need to spend, but don’t spend more than you have to.

1. Epoxy

This is our bread and butter. 

It’s most of what we do because, for more people and most applications, an epoxy floor coating offers an ideal balance between function and affordability. 

And to make it even better, epoxy can be effectively used as a base coating in combination with another coating, like urethane. 

This can be great for people who need some extra protection against things like UV rays and motor oil. 

Many people don’t know that epoxy can combine with other floor coatings, but that’s really one of its superpowers. 

Whether used alone or alongside another coating, an epoxy floor coating will generally be the best choice for most people, especially residential homeowners. 

2. Polyurethane

Polyurethane is known for being a slightly more flexible and scratch-resistant alternative to epoxy’s hardness and comparative brittleness. 

By brittleness, we don’t mean that epoxy is like glass but rather that it may be more likely to scratch or sustain damage from things like dragging heavy machinery across its surface. 

Like we mentioned just a minute ago, though, polyurethane can be layered on top of an epoxy base layer to give you the benefits of both. 

Depending on how much action you’re expecting your garage floor to see, this may be the solution for you.

3. Polyurea

To make it simple, polyurea provides a lot of the same benefits of polyurethane (chemical resistance, UV protection, etc.), but it cures faster. 

This means you don’t need to wait as long after applying it before your floor is ready for use. 

The tradeoff for this is that polyurea coatings will usually be more expensive and don’t have quite the same flexibility that polyurethane has. 

They’re still more flexible than epoxy, though, which can make a polyurea coating another great option to combine with an epoxy base layer.

Get a Professional Consult

There are some other garage floor coatings out there, but these are probably the most common ones. 

So, they’ll probably be the most affordable and the easiest for you to find where you are.  

However, one important thing to note is that the effectiveness of any coating relies a lot on how it is applied to your floor. 

In other words, the answer to “What is the best garage floor coating?” is largely dependent on who is applying that coating and how they are doing it. 

A great coating that is applied unevenly or incompletely will not provide the level of protection that it’s capable of. 

It’s not the formula’s fault if a spot on your floor gets missed in the installation process and just isn’t coated, or if parts of your floor have a thinner coating than others. 

So, whichever coating you choose, be sure to get a professional consultation to determine whether you’ve made the right choice and to schedule a professional installation. 

It’s better to pay a little upfront to get the job done right than to pay a lot later because it wasn’t done correctly in the beginning.