Can You Paint Vinyl Flooring?
If you want to give your vinyl flooring a new lease of life, you might start to search ‘can you paint vinyl flooring’ to give you an idea on whether you should and the best way to go about painting vinyl floors. You’ll be glad to know that you can paint over vinyl floors, but you need to be careful to use the right materials and follow the right process to get the best finish possible.
Is it recommended to paint vinyl flooring?
As a general rule, it’s advised that you don’t paint over vinyl flooring for multiple reasons. One of the main problems is that paint doesn’t tend to bond well with vinyl flooring due to dirt and irregularities in the surface of the flooring. If you’re looking to completely change the theme of a room, the best thing to do is to remove your flooring and lay some new, as this is a safer and more reliable option than painting over your old vinyl flooring. If you want some inspiration, check out our vinyl flooring buyers guide for some tips and tricks.
How to paint vinyl flooring
If you have to paint vinyl flooring, there are a few steps you can take to ensure you get the best result without damaging your current flooring. It’s easier than you might think, but it’s still best to follow best practice!
Prepare your flooring
The first and one of the most important steps before painting is to prepare your vinyl flooring. You have to carefully clean your flooring to get rid of any dirt and dust before you begin, as this can affect how well the paint is applied later. Check out our guide if you’re not sure how to clean vinyl flooring. After cleaning, you’ll need to sand down your flooring to help remove its shine. If you have sandpaper around the house, great! If not, you can pick up some sandpaper at your local hardware store, anything around 170-230 grit should work fine. This can either be done with a power sander, or with a sanding pole if you want something a little cheaper. This doesn’t matter too much, it just changes how much effort you have to put in!
If your floor has any holes it’s worth trying to fill these in with filler powder and floor bond, which are usually inexpensive and found at a local DIY store or online. This makes applying your primer and paint slightly easier later on!
Priming & Painting
Now you can get on to the exciting part of the process - priming and painting your vinyl flooring! The first step is to get a decent floor primer, which can be obtained in a local store or online - you’ll only need one coat of this (although you can do 2 if you really want to!) which can be applied using a simple roller.
What’s more important is getting the right type of paint for your vinyl flooring - because your floors are prone to getting dirty, trodden on and are in generally high traffic areas, you’ll need to make sure you buy floor paint, which is more durable and can stand up to being constantly walked on! You can apply this using a roller, once your primer is dry (it might be worth testing a small area to make sure you like the colour before you do it on the whole floor.) Once you’re ready, you can stick painters tape to the floor trim to make sure you don’t splash any paint and get to work! Apply as many coats as it takes to achieve an even colour, but make sure to wait for the previous coat to dry before you start the next one.
If you follow this guide, painting your vinyl floor shouldn’t be a problem! If you take care and don’t cut corners, you should end up with a floor as good as new which can last you years to come.