Concrete coating products take basic, dull, abrasive, and boring concrete to new heights. Concrete almost becomes fashionable, stylish, and classy. To get an idea of what kinds of coatings are manufactured for express use with concrete, the following four basic polymers and what they do are described.
Epoxies
Epoxies are like thick, acrylic paint you roll over the concrete. They are very popular for use in garages, day cares, car dealership showroom floors, and places where you want to avoid staining the concrete underneath with oils, greases, and possible caustic substances. The epoxy acts as a barrier as well as a decorative surface for the concrete.
Urethanes
Urethanes create the illusion of a hard glass surface or thick acrylic surface. They can be dyed different colors, kept transparent, or made opaque to create whatever effect you want. If you get into using urethanes in your line of work, spend a lot of time just playing around with them on sample blocks of concrete to see what you can do with these coatings before you use them regularly for customers.
Acrylics
Acrylics are even more versatile than urethanes, but not always as durable. If the coating is particularly thick, it is as durable if not more than a urethane coating. You can create amazing patterns on top of the concrete floor, and even create light floors with colored sections of acrylic coatings over the top of the lights and the concrete. This is a wildly popular approach for creating disco floors and light-up dance floors. It can also be used to coat vertical wall spaces, if you would like to have the coatings on walls and not just on floors or instead of on floors.
Polyureas
Polyureas are unique in their structure because they have a lot of stretch to them. Coating a concrete floor or wall with a polyurea is a good idea when the floor experiences a lot of shifting or force from seismic activity or from very heavy objects rolling over the top of it on a regular basis. The polyurea coating will expand and contract in winter and summer, too, and never split or rip up off of the concrete in the process. This coating can help keep the concrete under it together, and there have been situations where the concrete may have cracked, but the polyurea coating over the top of the cracked concrete does not show any signs of splitting or cracking.
For more information, contact suppliers of concrete coating products.