The most popular Garage Floor System is a decorative chipflake system, more specifically, what’s considered full coverage chipflake, in which, the dry flake is thrown until it completely covers all of the liquid basecoat(glue/adhesive) for the flakes.

When it comes to professional garage floor coating companies:

1. Over 90% of reputable companies are using the same generic product chemistry on top of the Decorative Flake, a Polyaspartic.
2. The biggest difference is with the coating BELOW the Decorative Flake, the flakes adhesive base coat.
3. The adhesive layer, aka Base Coat, are typically Epoxy based or Polyurea based.

There are two common approaches to applying the Full Chipflake System by professionals:

1. Hybrid System- Epoxy as adhesive underneath the Chipflake layer, and Aliphatic Polyurea(Polyaspartic) on top of the Chipflake layer.
2. Polyurea System- Aromatic Polyurea as adhesive underneath the Chipflake layer, and Aliphatic Polyurea(Polyaspartic) on top of the Chipflake layer.

Both have their pros and cons that should be considered specifically for your project. More info on that coming soon. But the #1 factor to a long-lasting floor for either of these systems comes down to Surface Preparation. Should not be acid washing. Should be Diamond Grinding, Shotblasting, or a combination of grinding & blasting.

Note: If the contractor is only applying a partial flake system there needs to be modifications considered for the coating systems UV stability & Color Retention.

Below image points out the layers of a full flake decorative chipflake coating system.