When it comes to old basement floors – never underestimate the power of paint! Painting our basement floors was a quick and budget-friendly option!
DISCLAIMER: This post contains ads and affiliate links. At no additional cost to you, we may receive a commission for purchases made through these links and ads.
With some lovely white painted beams above us, we turned our attention to the concrete floors in our basement laundry room. Like the other half of our basement, I explored every option from paint to linoleum to tile. But for the sake of time (and money) – paint was a pretty obvious choice.
The existing floor was an uneven mixture of old and new concrete, peeling paint, and stains (see below).
While painting the floors was easily the quickest of our options, it still required a fair amount of prep (if we intended it to last and be durable).
SHOP THE POST –
We got up as much loose dirt and paint as we could with a wire bristle brush and a solution of mild soap (we used a few drops of Sal Suds in a bucket of warm water). We then vacuumed up any puddles with our ShopVac and put shop fans on the area for a full day.
In the meantime, we filled a couple of minor cracks with DAP ‘Liquid Cement Crack Filler’.
After the floors were clean (as much as possible) and dry, I began painting. I used a brush to paint the perimeter and around any obstacles.
Eventually, we got to continue with the more rewarding and quick-moving process of rolling the paint for the rest of the room.
We applied two coats (letting it fully dry in between), and allowed the final application to dry for a full 2 days before moving any thing back into the room.
We are definitely happy with the finished product. The paint has held up very well to frequent foot traffic, dirt, and household cleaning products. Plus, any scratches have been very quick and easy to patch with a touch of paint. It’s amazing what a little (or a lot of!) paint can do!
Product used: Sherwin Williams Porch & Floor Enamel, custom tinted to Benjamin Moore ‘Ashwood Moss‘.
If you’re having trouble removing paint blobs or you want to strip paint on the floor as part of the prep a wire brush is a really good tool for doing so. Looks like you did a really great job here! did you pain over the existing chipped pain because your finish looks really nice and smooth?
Hi Ben! I definitely agree with the wire brush prep. We scrubbed the heck out of it with a wire brush that attached to a long handle. We weren’t able to get every bit of old paint up, so we just wound up painting over it, which didn’t seem to be a problem.
What brand of paint did you use?
Sherwin Williams Porch & Floor Enamel
Hi! I am about to embark on this very same adventure. Is your floor slippery (when wet)? I’m trying to work out if I need to add an anti slip to the paint. Am planning on the same Sherman Williams porch and patio paint……
No more than any other surface in the house. You could always test a small area before painting the whole floor. Good luck!
Did you paint under your appliances? I’m hoping to someday do this to my laundry room. It may be my quarantine project.
Nope:) Just carefully painted with a brush as far in as we could. And after the paint cured we moved the appliances slightly to paint in between. Best of luck and stay safe!
Hi! Our basket is huge and has a pool table that I will not be moving; just painting around. It is also quite the storage room. Do you think it is effective to paint 1/2 the room at a time? So I don’t ya w to carry everything up and back down?
It will be a little more work to paint around things, but it can totally be done. I’ve painted several rooms where I didn’t moved everything out, just pushed it all to the center, and put a drop cloth over it.
Can you tell where the old paint is? I wanted to strip out our old paint and paint our cement laundry but I can’t get the old paint off! Now I’m wondering how noticeable painting over the existing paint would be?
There were a lot of concrete imperfections in the floors so the old paint was probably the least noticeable – I don’t know if I can spot any specific areas in the pictures to show you :\ The thing about painting floors is that at some point your likely going to have chips and have to repaint areas, so it might not be worth stressing about the old paint in the long run.
I’m ready to paint our entire walkout basement floor, walls and exposed ceiling also white. Wondering how dark this color is in person and if it shows dust and dirt? (It looks awesome in the photos!)
Hi and sorry for the delay! It’s darker than anything I’d put on the wall, but I honestly love it. It reminds me of a deep blue slate tile. It does have a tendency to show dust and dirt, but nothing crazy. I think because it’s a solid color, it just doesn’t camouflage things well.