Your garage floor has survived some of your messiest projects, be those restoring a classic car (and leaking oil all over the place), painting furniture, and even doing some woodwork. As a result, the floor is looking a little worse for wear. You’d love to replace your garage flooring, but you’re stumped on choosing between modular and epoxy flooring. Which is the more advantageous pick?
Modular flooring has the following benefits:
- Skid-resistant so your floor looks better longer
- Slip-resistant so you’re less likely to fall, even if the floor is wet
- You can easily replace modular flooring if you ever want to
- Cleaning modular flooring is a breeze
Here are the benefits of epoxy flooring:
- Smooth, shiny garage floor finish
- Durability for years of use
- Cleanup isn’t challenging
Keep reading to learn more about the benefits of modular and epoxy flooring. You also won’t want to miss the drawbacks of both so you can choose the right garage flooring material for you! Let’s begin.
The Benefits and Drawbacks of Modular Flooring
In the battle of Modular Vs. Epoxy Flooring as covered by Memphis Garage & Closets, let’s start first with modular flooring. If you need a refresher, modular flooring includes a series of floor tiles that you connect together across the length of your garage floor. These tiles come in all sorts of colors and finishes to mimic the appearance of steel, solid tile, rubber, or whatever you want. Swisstrax flooring especially can accommodate any and every modular flooring style you think would suit your garage.
Here is an overview of the pros and cons of modular flooring:
Pros
- Skid Resistance: If you’re working with heavy machinery in your garage, such as a lawnmower, a huge cabinet on wheels, or yes–even your car–you hate how tracks are left behind as visible, unappealing black skids. Modular flooring is skid-resistant so these marks never show up. Feel free to back that restored car into your garage. Your flooring can handle it.
- Slip Resistance: You need to trust the floor beneath you when working in your garage. That’s especially true if you have a woodworking saw in your hand or you’re in the middle of welding. Modular flooring will keep your feet underneath you with its slip-resistant properties. Focus on the important work you’re doing, not staying upright.
- Simple and Fast Replacement: Most home renovations require you to be in love with the changes you make. Not with modular flooring. If you’re feeling fickle and want to explore another type of modular tile, all you have to do is dislodge your current tiles and put new ones in. You can do this job in an afternoon with plenty of time to spare. That’s so little time for such big changes!
- Quick Cleanup: Oh no, did your restored car leak oil again? Maybe you accidentally bumped into your open bucket of paint and tipped some over. That’s okay. With a pressure washer, you can get that modular flooring looking as good as new. For less serious messes like dirt and dust buildup, your household Shop Vac can keep your modular floors tidy. Darker-colored tiles also hide messes more easily.
Cons
- Visibility of the Seams: The only drawback to modular flooring is that the seams are visible between the tiles. For most people, they really won’t care about this, but it’s worth mentioning anyway if it will help you make up your mind about your garage flooring.
The Benefits and Drawbacks of Epoxy Flooring
Your other option is epoxy flooring. Let’s also start with a recap for this flooring type. Epoxy is a chemical compound that dries like a resin. This resin, which is a polyepoxide, is part of a polymer and prepolymer class. By pouring the resin layer over your garage floors, the original flooring is protected from further damage via the epoxy. Here are the benefits of epoxy flooring.
Pros
- Smooth, Shiny Finish: Do you like the kind of polished flooring common in school gymnasiums and other large buildings? More than likely, those floors are finished with epoxy. Pouring the resin over your garage floors will make them look shiny and feel very smooth to walk on. You’ll want to get some overhead lighting installed in your garage so you can best appreciate your new floors.
- Durability: Once your garage floor is covered in epoxy, you won’t have to touch the floors again for quite a while. On average, epoxy lasts for 10 to 20 years, which gives you a long time in your garage to tinker and play without ruining your floors.
- Simple Cleanup: You also won’t take a lot of time out of your day to maintain your epoxy floors. With a store-bought dust mop or a broom with soft bristles, you can easily tackle most day-to-day epoxy floor cleanup. If you have a serious mess that needs a more heavy-duty clean, you’ll need to first sweep with the broom, then use a hard-foam mop with clear ammonia and water.
Cons
You also want to keep in mind that epoxy has a slew of downsides, including the following.
- Can’t Do It Yourself: If you’re the DIY type, then you might want to skip the epoxy flooring. Professionals are best trained for the job of pouring this resin evenly and ensuring that it dries for consistent protection across your entire garage floor.
- Doesn’t Change Floors, Just Protects Them: If you hate the dark oil stains that mar your garage flooring, don’t think epoxy is a cure-all. It dries translucently, and even though it’s shiny, you can still clearly see through the resin to the floor below. You’ll protect your garage floor from further damage with a layer of epoxy, but you can’t erase what’s already there. You’d want modular tiles to cover the floor so you don’t have to stare at those old stains anymore.
- Not Slip-Resistant When Wet: Epoxy flooring is plenty slip-resistant, although not necessarily as much as modular flooring. That said, the grip you usually get with epoxy goes out the window the moment the flooring gets wet. Whether it’s water, oil, or any other liquid, stepping near that spill if your floor is epoxy could lead to major injuries like slips and falls.
- More Expensive than Modular Flooring: Another downside to epoxy is you’ll pay more for it. For each square foot of garage space, epoxy costs $2 to $5, then you have to add $1 to $6 per square foot for labor. Modular flooring costs between $1.80 and $6 for each square foot before labor costs.
- No Way to Easily Replace Epoxy: With modular flooring, if you’re tired of your garage floors, you can remove the tiles and start over with new ones. To get rid of epoxy, you must warm up a heat gun to 90 degrees Fahrenheit, soften up bits of the epoxy, and then scrape them away with a plastic scraper. Think about how long you’d have to do that to remove all the epoxy on your garage floor. It would take weeks if not months!
Conclusion
Epoxy and modular flooring are two of the most popular choices for garage floors across the country. While both flooring options are advantageous in their own way, modular flooring is the better pick for several reasons. Modular floors let you change out your flooring when the mood strikes you, you get better slip-resistance, plus, they install much faster. Hopefully, you’re ready to choose a new garage flooring material for all your future projects. Best of luck!
