WHY ARMORGARAGE IS THE BEST EPOXY

Best Garage Epoxy Floor Coating

Differences Between Epoxy Floor Coatings

The most frequent question we get is what makes your epoxy floor coatings better than other garage floor coatings. The short and simple answer is in the two images below. Our product quality far surpasses that of other epoxy paints on the market! On the left side of each image is our epoxy coating and on the right is a typical store bought water based, low solids, polyureas or Cycloaliphatic type floor epoxy. These typical types of epoxy coatings will require you to purchase multiples of their kits to even come close to covering your floor properly because they should mostly only be used as primers. Just take one look at the cinder block, the left side is our Armor Chip Garage Epoxy and on the right is a top name brand epoxy. The difference in finishes with one coat is startling. Which means you'll be spending a lot more TIME & MONEY to get the same level of finish as our garage floor coatings and the worst part is you'll still end up with a lower quality epoxy that won't last. See the link to the EPOXY COMPARISON CHART at the bottom of this page to see the true equivalent prices of other brands when compared to ours. If you are going to epoxy paint your floor you need to read this whole page, then the How To Prep & Paint Your Floor page. These are must reads if you plan on doing your floor only once.

Here are some important facts you need to know and may want to keep in mind as you shop for epoxy flooring! Buying an epoxy paint for your floor is much more complicated than buying paint for your walls or ceilings. There are tremendous destructive forces produced by your twisting turning hot tires and the grit that is on them. If you don't know what you're buying you'll end up just wasting a lot of time and money. So spending 5 minutes to read this page will save you many hours or even days of heartache in the future.



The single most important question you should ask is what is the Abrasion Rating of the epoxy you intend to purchase. Abrasion IS the number one enemy to your floor finish. It happens every time your tires turn, every time you walk on it, every time a floor jack or tool chest is rolled across it. Abrasion is constantly attacking the finish of your floor. So you need a Urethane Topcoat with high abrasion resistance which means it has a low Abrasion loss rating. ArmorGarage epoxy floor kits come with the best abrasion resistant topcoats in the business.
Be wary of clear versions of standard epoxy being sold as topcoats. This is very often the case with Cycloaliphatic epoxies. Again, Epoxy Paint and Topcoats are not the same! Look at the Epoxy Comparison Chart, our Topcoats are several orders of magnitude better than our closet competitor. So before you buy any epoxy ask what the abrasion rating is and if their topcoat is a real topcoat and not just a clear version of their epoxy! The lower the Abrasion loss rating the better the topcoat is. It means during testing it lost less milligrams of material than other epoxies. Most companies don't know their abrasion rating or won't publish one its so bad!
Gray Armor Chip with Forklift Duty Topcoat
Armor Chip Versus Failed Cycloaliphatic Blue Epoxy

We offer many different epoxy floor kits because there are many different applications and surface requirements. Most other companies offer one or maybe two epoxies and try to make your application fit their product, that simply cannot and should not be done. No epoxy is the perfect fit for every application, that's why we offer so much information and many different systems. You need to buy what fits your application needs best. Beware of one coat do all epoxies or epoxies that are supposedly good enough. That is a huge mistake using that logic, there is no such thing as overkill when it comes to applying epoxy flooring. You always want your epoxy floor coating to be rated higher than the wear load on it and never just close enough or even worse lower than the wear load.

From selling millions of square feet of DIY epoxy kits and epoxy flooring systems to military, industrial, commercial and residential users we know that there's lot's of ways to cheaply epoxy paint your floors and very few ways to do it right so that you'll never have to repaint your floor ever again. Just because it says epoxy paint on the label doesn't mean it's a real epoxy product. Most likely it's a water based or oil based Enamel floor paint with just enough epoxy additives to legally call it epoxy or some form of cheaper lower solids epoxy paint or an all in one hybrid solids epoxy such as a Cycloaliphatic. The main selling factor of these types of epoxies is their lower price. There's a reason for their low price and it's not because they have some sort of magic formula. Most likely they're a water based product or a lower percentage of solids, or their Mil thickness is below 10(most likely only 2-3 Mils) which means you're getting much less in product, it's not a long term durable coating and or their topcoat has a poor abrasion rating above 25.

Any Abrasion rating above 20 is not considered heavy duty, any abrasion rating above 40 is not even worth putting on your floor. Any epoxy with an abrasion rating above 30 is no better then regular enamel floor paint. Lower priced kits usually boast not needing a Topcoat which is not true and often Cycloalophatic companies can only offer a clear version of their epoxy which offers no extra protection. Simply adding in a UV additive does not make it a topcoat. A topcoat must have a better abrasion rating than the epoxy it's covering otherwise what's the purpose of it!

When you do your research and find out what or should we say what you're not getting with competing products you'll know exactly whyArmor Garage Epoxy Floors are the best. Not only are our floor coatings the best, ArmorGarage is the best website that teaches everything you need to know about epoxy floors and how to apply them properly. We also teach you what you don't need to know and what's just marketing hype, see Epoxy Facts & Fiction to learn how to ignore marketing hype.

Do some research before buying, see the specification ratings and equivalent price comparisons.
Know the facts before you buy any epoxy, even ours.

Our years of experience dealing with customers who have purchased all sorts of epoxy floor coatings such as water based, hybrid cycloaliphatic, polyureas or lower solids epoxy kits has always been that these types of products always fail in one way or another. Most likely from the high gloss finish wearing off, yellowing and or from Hot Tire Lifting! Cycloaliphatic epoxies actually bubble up as you apply it requiring you to use a leaf blower as you go. They also yellow prematurely. We get calls from unhappy customers everyday who've used these types of epoxies and want to redo their floors. Don't be fooled into thinking Cycloaliphatic or Polyurea epoxies are some sort of new technology, they're not!

We are also the only company that supplies you with calibrated notched squeegees with our kits so that the epoxy is applied at the proper specified thickness.

All our epoxy flooring systems are professional high quality Aliphatic Epoxies. If you want a floor that's easy to install, easy to clean, is resistant to chemicals spills from your car or work place, then you need an ArmorGarage Aliphatic Epoxy Floor System. We do not sell any water based epoxies, low solids, polyurea or cycloaliphatic epoxies with low grade substitute materials so as to advertise a low selling price. If saving a few dollars is your main concern, you're making a big mistake when dealing with epoxy floor paints. The mess you wind up with is no way worth the money you save.

Click Here For The Epoxy Flooring Comparison Chart.

Here are couple of important facts you should know:

Did you know that with most epoxies your hot tires can reactivate the curing process, meaning that the epoxy softens and will discolor, bubble, peel and even stick to your tires so that the next time you move your vehicle part of your epoxy floor will be coming along for the ride on your tires. This is called Hot Tire Lifting. And that your hot tires are extremely abrasive and can wear the high gloss finish off most epoxies in no time! Armor Garage epoxies are specifically designed and engineered to be Hot Tire proof.

First, know that all solids based epoxies will Yellow form sun exposure without a polyurethane topcoat, that is an indisputable epoxy fact.

So if a kit you are considering doesn't provide you with a true polyurethane topcoat you should stop right there! Second, if a kit you are considering needs a wait time after mixing better known as induction time before applying it to your floor, that is a sure sign of a low quality epoxy coating, all high quality epoxies have a short pot life and require being applied to the floor immediately after mixing, if the kit is water based that's another sign of a low quality epoxy. So if you are thinking of buying any epoxy that is under 10 Mils thick, that doesn't require etching of the floor, that doesn't have a real anti wear polyurethane topcoat or is the topcoat is just a clear version of the epoxy with some additives, needs a wait time after mixing or is water based. Then you are better off buying an inexpensive conventional enamel floor paint and recoating over it every year or so!

Simply slapping on any of the above mentioned type of coatings to your floor is a guaranteed waste of your time and money! This is especially true when using color flakes in the epoxy, it's just common sense if you don't seal in and protect the decorative chips with an anti wear topcoat how can exposed plastic chips withstand tire abrasion? When the chips and finish are literally grinded off your new floor in a lot shorter time then you ever imagined. Please watch the video on the Home Page to see how much destructive grinding force your twisting turning tires can put on your coating. When your tires pulverize your bargain epoxy floor coating you'll not only be unhappy about the poor appearance of your floor, you'll be real unhappy when you find out you're not covered for that under the guarantee not even by those so called "lifetime guarantees" and that you have to redo your floor at your time and expense!