What experts think about the future of floor coatings

Coating concrete floors has been done for a long time and it is done all over the world on a daily basis. On the one hand, there is a lot of experience out there on the other hand there is still room for innovation. And because floors are everywere, everey new development can make a huge impact worldwide. One issue that can make such a great impact is reducing the complexity of the application.

Lidija Balta, Product Manager at Chromos (Member of the Kansai Paint Group)

“In the most cases flooring renovation includes setting of the multilayer system in that order: primer, quartz broadcasting, bearing layer, quartz broadcasting, finishing layer. From the aspect of investors and contractors it is time-consuming and expensive”, explains Lidija Balta, Product Manager at Chromos, a company of the Kansai Paint Group. “Ideally”, she adds, “a self-levelling mortar should be applied easily and demonstrate perfect levelling with maximum filler load, and thus eliminate the need for the quartz broadcasting or additional layer.”

Reducing number of coating layers

Carsten Nagel, Head of Global Enduse Decorative Coating, Byk Chemie

Reducing the number of layers is also something the raw material companies are working on. “To reduce the number of layers in the structure of a floor coating, we are working with other raw materials makers on the development of 3-component polyurethane systems”, explains Carsten Nagel, Head of global endues decorative coatings at Byk. The one-layer systems “show outstanding physical and chemical properties and were developed among other things for the food and drink industry”, he adds. Among the mentioned properties are Resistance to acids and bases, thermal shock resistance, Quick drying, temperature-stable, suitable for vapor cleaning and an individual coating thicknesses.

Zvonimir Bezak, Profiline Manager at Helios (Memeber of the Kansai Paint Group)

Zvonimir Bezak, Profiline Manager at Helios, sees seamless flooring systems getting more and more important. “Because of the immense possibilities of architectural design, competitive prices, easy maintenance and quick application, flooring systems based on artificial resins are moving more and more to private owner areas”, he says. According to Zvonimir Bezak Interior designers are suggesting epoxy resin based floor coverings as a monolith substitution to ceramic or cementitious toppings. Also “Polyaspartic coatings are relatively new, but very promising”, he adds.

Conductivity of floor coatings

Annika Gerbener, Enduse Specialist Flooring, Byk Chemie

Also the reduction of VOCs will be important. “This is achieved, on the one hand, with a transition from classic solvent-containing to hydrous systems, but also with a changed selection of raw materials to be used in final coating”, says Annika Gerbener, Enduse Specialis Flooring at Byk. “Another trend that is driving our additives business is the work on increasing the conductivity of floor coatings based on graphs or graphite. Given the single-layer structure of graphs, the permanent stabilisation of these pigments in the system is a challenge”, she adds.

A more detailed version and the contact data of the quoted experts of this interview was published in European Coatings Journal 6/2017. Subscribers of the digital library European Coatings 360 ° can read it for free online.