How Long will my Epoxy Floor Last?

Epoxy floors are renowned for their durability.

However, a lot depends upon the nature of the solution you’ve selected and how it has been applied.

Using a professional

There are some things that are absolutely critically important if you’re looking for a long-lasting finish;

select a very experienced professional with a verifiable trackrecord;
make sure the concrete floor is fully prepared – pay appropriately to be certain and take your provider’s advice on this;
pay for several coats on heavy-use areas like garages, public access spaces (like receptions or walkways) or light industrial floors;
avoid what appear to be cut-price solutions;
be clear you understand the difference between epoxy paint and epoxy flooring and select the latter for the longest-lasting solutions.

The above are all pre-requisites for success.

Match usage to solutions

A professional should always advise you objectively on this one but to be clear, remember that some solutions and their costs may be more appropriate for some situations than others.

This is touched on above but by way of examples:

the solution you might need for a typical private home occasional parking-only garage might be very different to a public parking garage with constant 24 x 7 coming-and-going usage;
a light industrial use epoxy flooring solution could be subject to less demanding use than say a main public thoroughfare in the reception of a large corporate HQ building.

There is a large matrix of possible combinations here and taken together, they will have a significant influence over the life expectancy of your epoxy flooring.

Change of use

It’s worth keeping in mind too that an epoxy floor when laid, will typically have been designed with your specified usage in mind.

So, if you originally said it was for a typical low-impact domestic garage then subsequently convert that building into a blacksmith’s forge and workshop, you might expect to see some potential issues arising with the suitability of the flooring solution you originally selected!

General longevity

Many of these assessments as to durability can be quite technical and again, a good professional will advise as part of their quotation service.

An important place to look is just what the quotation is offering by way of warranty. If the warranty is short, that might indicate either:

the provider is unsure of their own capabilities or
you’re planning to use the floor in a very high impact area.

In passing, it’s not unusual for warranties to contain “change of use” caveats and that in itself shouldn’t be cause for concern – providing you have noted them accordingly.

Example

To try and talk actual numbers, let’s consider again the example of a typical domestic largely parking-only garage floor.

Such floors should last for between 5-10 years on average. Do note though that depending upon your other uses of the garage, even though epoxy floors are stain-resistant, the floor may be liable to some staining if there are certain corrosive or other substances spilt. That should not though affect the longevity of the finish.