A lady left a comment on one of my videos on Youtube, mentioning the difficulties in cleaning white epoxy floors.
And it got me thinking: Architects and interior deisgners love to specify white floors, but they are in fact very challenging to apply and maintain.
White epoxies are tough to apply for several reasons:
White coatings tend to reflect light which makes it very difficult to notice any problems when applying such floors. Many times when my crew applied white epoxy floors, we missed uneven marks, pinholes, even trapped dust. It’s not that my staff were being sloppy, it is just very difficult to spot these on uncured white epoxy.
Another problem with white floors is, that strong white coatings need to be formulated with additional whitening pigment (also known as TiO2). The more of this TiO2 that you add, the harder the leveling becomes. This is why I have experienced several leveling nightmares with white floors. (see pic below)
The next problem with white floors is that once they are cured, everything (and I mean everything) becomes visible. If the sun hits the floor from an angle, the floor may show strange reflections. A small pinhole that would normally not even be visible on a gray floor, starts collecting dust and leaves a visible mark on a white surface.
And the final problem is maintenance. People seem to think that white floors will stay forever white. Its a bit like wearing white jeans every day and expecting them to stay forever clean. No matter how well you clean them, eventually these floors will lose their white gloss. So unless you have the time and budget to regularly re-coat your floors, do not even consider having white floors.
If you want to learn more about white floors you can check out this video:
And if you want to improve your overall epoxy skills, you should check out our online course.
Akis Apostolopoulos
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