How to Paint a Concrete Floor
For a beautiful transformation, come learn how to paint concrete floors. It’s amazing the difference that some paint and elbow grease can make!
Complete your project with a painted pallet porch sign, a diy mudroom cubby storage system, and some porch and patio decor ideas.
by Bekah of Country Mouse Tales
Hi! I am thrilled to share how to paint a concrete floor! Here’s a before and after of my concrete mudroom floor:
So much better, right?!? Here’s the process for how to paint a concrete floor:
Step 1. Clean and Etch
Our first step was giving it a good scrub down, followed by etching. You need to etch the concrete to give the porch or concrete paint a good surface to adhere to. This keeps the paint from flaking off immediately. I used a long-handled shop broom to scrub the floor. Directions vary from product to product, so follow the directions for the cleaner you choose. We used Valspar Fast Prep, which is a premixed degreaser and etcher in one.
Step 2: Paint first color of concrete floor paint
After allowing our floors to completely dry, I put a coat of pure white porch/concrete paint on all of the concrete surfaces. Don’t bother with a paint tray for this, I just poured it out of the bucket as I went, then rolled it smooth.
Step 3: Draw your pattern and tape the lines
After waiting for the paint to cure (I only waited two days, but I should have given it more time. I ended up causing myself more work! Check the directions on your can of concrete paint), draw your lines using a pencil, a level, and a tape measure. I started on the far wall, and measured the starting lines for the points of my diamonds. My diamonds are 22 inches long, so I marked each spot. After that, it was simply a matter of measuring and drawing. This is tedious! Then, on to taping. I used Frogtape for delicate surfaces, and I put my tape on the outside edge of only the diamonds that I was planning to paint gray. I used a putty knife held at an angle to give myself a good clean edge when I tore my tape off.
Step 4: Paint second color of concrete floor paint
I used a foam roller to get a nice even coat of my gray paint (the color is New Concrete by Valspar). I gave the gray diamonds two coats each and used a paint brush to do the edges next to the tape. While my paint was still wet, I started pulling off the tape. Remember how I said two days curing time wasn’t enough? This is why! I had to go back with a paint brush and touch up ALL the edges. Frustrating!
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Find more ideas for mudrooms:
Lorene has been behind the scenes here at Remodelaholic for more than a decade! She believes that planning projects and actually completing them are two different hobbies, but that doesn't stop her from planning at least a dozen projects at any given time. She spends her free time creating memories with her husband and 5 kids, traveling as far as she can afford, and partaking of books in any form available.
Thanks for the inspiration! Heading over to Country Mouse Tales to let Bekah know how much I love her floors.
Thank you so much for sharing. It looks wonderful. I’d like to do that in my shop later and I’ll try to listen to you and be very patient!
Thank you so much for featuring my floors!!
You are most welcome, Bekah!
Be Kay. This is such a stupid question. But here goes. How or where does one save/store blogs so the most ones of interest are not forgotten? Want to continue to read yours. Thanks so very much. Barb
Should have come up as Becka
Hi Barbara,
Not a stupid question at all! You can bookmark it in your browser (the steps to doing that depend on your browser), or you can follow on a social media such as Facebook, or you could use a feed reader, which is a program you set up with your favorite blogs and it automatically checks the blogs you indicated for new content and shows it to you (either on the website or by using an app on your phone or tablet). Or, for Remodelaholic, we also offer an email subscription, where you can sign up to get new emails — https://www.remodelaholic.com/email-newsletter/
Have a great day!
Sweet blog! I found it while browsing on Yahoo
News. Do you have any suggestions on how to get listed in Yahoo News?
I’ve been trying for a while but I never seem to get there! Appreciate it
That’s great that you found us. Cassity use to write for Yahoo, maybe that is how we got there, I am not sure.
Those floors are just beautiful and now I know what I’m going to do with our utility room floor (that I’ve hated for years) Thanks so much Remodelaholic and Country Mouse Tales for this fab idea. Off to see what other ideas Country Mouse has for me!!
Marie:-)
Thanks for the comment, Marie! Happy browsing 🙂
I am getting ready to do my back patio and my front porch and my walkway to my front porch. I bought a brick stencil on ebay and I am planning on doing this soon. The only problem, every time I ask someone what to do, I always get a different answer. I would like to know if it is alright, after I cleaned the concrete floor with bleach and scrubbed it good, can I now start painting as I want to use the grout of the concrete, then I plan to paint my stencil brick red to match my brick on one wall. I talked to someone last night and they said that is all I needed to do to my concrete. What do you say? Since I wasn’t planning on doing anything else, do you think that my concrete paint will stay as I do not want it to peel at all. When I do it, I want it to be nice and stay nice for a very long time, so I need your advise, please.
I’m not good at measuring. I can see myself with uneven squares. Any more simple ideas? Like maybe random floral designs through out the floor?🤔
That would be a great idea, Norma! Check out this post about wall painting ideas — most of these ideas and patterns could be adapted to a concrete floor so you could do more organic shapes like florals or less-perfect geometric shapes. https://www.remodelaholic.com/25-interior-painting-ideas/