How to Clean Your Concrete Flooring Paint
Here at Anderson Painting, coating your concrete floors with the proper paint and/or sealer is a key way to protect your floors from damage, increase their lifespan, and enhance their appearance. That said, painting your floors does not get you off the hook regarding regular maintenance. Even the best epoxy paint is bound to get dirty over time, and keeping it clean will ensure that your floors look and function their best. Fortunately, most floor paints and sealers make cleaning relatively easy, so long as you’re careful with the chemicals and methods you use.
How to Clean Concrete Floor Paint
Start by Sweeping
Though most concrete floor paints offer some degree of dust resistance, there’s no way to keep every speck of dust at bay. Likewise, dirt and other dry debris are bound to make their way onto your painted floors given enough time. It’s best to begin your cleaning process by sweeping away these dry particles. Make sure you really dig into the corners, too.
Don’t Forget to Dust
Sweeping away dust and debris is a good start, but to truly eliminate all traces of dust, you have to, well, dust. Use a brand new dust mop to attract any remaining particles before moving on to the wet portion of cleaning. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a muddy mess.
Time to Mop -- But Mind the Chemicals
Soap and warm water are cleaning staples for a reason, and they’re usually all you need to thoroughly clean your concrete floor coatings. That said, you can’t use just any type of soap or detergent. Cleaning solutions containing ammonia or vinegar, for instance, can corrode the floor paint and potentially damage the underlying floor itself. Generally speaking, the milder your soap, the better.
Wring and Rinse
Once you’ve got the right mix of soap and water for your purposes, make sure you mop methodically. You don’t want to load up the mop with too much moisture as this can oversaturate the floor and damage the paint job, so make sure you wring out the mop after dunking it every time. Also, for the most thorough clean, begin at a corner and work section by section (about 4 square feet in size) until you have covered the entire floor.
Let it Dry
All that’s left to do now is let the floor dry. You can speed up the process by opening up doors and windows and/or placing fans around the area.
What About Power Washing?
If this process seems a bit straightforward or mundane, it’s understandable. You might wonder if it’s more efficient to simply pressure wash your concrete floors instead. While there’s no doubt that pressure washing is faster than dusting and mopping, understand that this method can damage epoxy floor paint, especially if handled improperly. Of course, if you wish to remove your concrete flooring paint to make way for a new application, power washing, sandblasting, and grinding techniques may be in order. But for regular maintenance purposes, the steps outlined above should serve your floors just fine.
Let Us Help You Keep it Clean
If you don’t have the time or confidence to clean your painted concrete floors, the experts at Anderson Painting can always help. We can also preop your floors for new coatings, apply residential or commercial floor paint, oversee repairs, and more. To learn more about us and all we do, call today at 919-610-1855 or email us at info@andersonpaintingnc.com!
