Your Ultimate Guide to Garage Flooring

Perhaps you want to protect your concrete garage floors from chemicals or wear and tear. Perhaps you simply want your garage to look nicer. Or perhaps you’re looking to simply increase the value of your home.

Nevertheless, you’re looking to install garage flooring to your home, and you’re wondering what types of garage floors you need to consider.

Tiles? Roll out? PVC? Epoxy? What are all those things and which one should I get?

The 3 Types of Garage Flooring

Okay, let’s begin by making things simpler for ourselves and make all of these words and jargon much simpler for us.

For now, understand that there are three kinds of garage floors you can consider.

1) Tile Garage Floors — These types of garage floors are the most popular option as they are really easy to install and relatively fool-proof. They usually come in square pieces (usually 1 sq. ft. each) and you install them by simply putting the pieces together like a puzzle.

2) Roll Out Vinyl (aka. PVC garage Flooring) — These types of floors are the second most popular option and unlike the garage floor tiles, you can install these by simply rolling them out and voila! You have garage floors!

3) Garage Floor Coatings — There are three kinds of garage floor coatings you can apply, epoxy, polyurea, and latex paint. We highly recommend that you do not install floor coatings yourself as they do require quite a bit of work to prime your concrete floors first.

So now that we understand the 3 types of garage floors, let’s talk about the pros and cons of each one so that you can decide for yourself which of these garage floor options is right for you.

Tile Garage Floors: What You Need to Know

PROS

Easy to Install - Ever done a puzzle? Well, installing tile garage floors is exactly like that, except on a much bigger scale and where all the pieces all go together. Seriously, installing tile garage floors is super easy that even your 5-year-old can do it! No painter or professionals needed.

Play With Colors - With tile garage floors, you have full control over what your garage floor will look like. You can opt to do the classic solid color or the checkered pattern, but feel free to go crazy with these as well! The world (or your garage) is your oyster!

Easy to Maintain - Most high-quality tiles are designed to be chemical or stain-resistant, so you should not have to do much to maintain or replace it. But if one of the tiles does get damaged, it is not going to break your bank as you just need to replace that one tile.

CONS

PRICE — There’re not much of a con to garage floor tiles except for the price. Depending on the garage tile you opt for, they can range from $1.90/sq. ft. All the way to $6.00/sq. ft.

Roll Out/PVC Garage Floors: What You Need to Know

PROS

Easy to Install - This is by far the biggest benefit to roll out/PVC garage floors. When you want to install it, all you have to do is take it out of its packaging, make any necessary cuts with your Exacto knife, and roll it out!

Color & Pattern Options - Although you have much less control over how your floor looks as compared to tile floors, you can choose among a variety of different patterns (e.g. diamond, coin, stripes, etc…) and a verity of different colors.

Cost - Roll out/PVC garage floors are the cheapest of all the garage flooring options. Prices can range from $1.50 - $4.00 per square foot spending on the thickness or the grade of the vinyl.

Cleaning — These rolls are super easy to clean. Just sweep or hose off any dirt or grime just as you would any other floors.

CONS

Customization — Unless you get yours completely custom made, which is difficult to find and probably very expensive, you’ll most likely end up with the same color and pattern throughout your garage floor, unlike with the tile garage floors.

Replacing Damaged Rolls — Unlike the tiles, which you can just replace one tile when one is damaged, with rolls, you’ll have to replace the whole roll if you get it damaged.

Durability — PVC rolls normally do not look their best after just 1-2 weeks and depending on how the roll was shipped and packaged, you might notice bumps and raised spots in the flooring for a while until the flooring settles.

Garage Floor Coatings: What You Need to Know

PROS

Price - Of all the garage floorings, coatings are definitely your cheapest option. Even if you were to opt for the high-end coatings, it will rarely cost you more than $1.00 per square foot.

CONS

Difficulty of Application - These coatings normally require the concrete flooring underneath to be meticulously primed. You need to sweep, pressure wash, diamond grind, and acid wash the floors. Not only that, but you also need to repair a lot of the cracks that are currently in the concrete. And furthermore, once you have primed the floors, applying these coatings require a special technique. Applying floor coverings is definitely not for the average DIY-er and might need the help of a professional.

Maintenance — Cracks will eventually form in these floor coatings, in which case you’ll need to call in a professional to patch those cracks.

So those are the 3 types of garage flooring options that we have. Which of these 3 types suits your garage/needs best?

Check out the selection on our website! I am sure you’ll find the one that’s right for you.