Popular TV shows like Property Brothers, This Old House, Rehab Addict, and Renovation Nation inspire homeowners to tackle more remodeling jobs. Social media has also helped to spread these professional design and decorating ideas where Pinterest alone offers up thousands of suggestions on how to beautify concrete. The Professional Contractor and the Do-It-Yourselfer support this remodeling revolution and their demand for products to complete fix-it and decorate it projects has fueled the architectural coatings industry.

In the decorative concrete marketplace, new products and finishing methods for coating concrete are emerging. Some finishes use polishes, dyes, stains, and tints and other styles to manipulate the surface with stamps, overlays, and acid stains. The list is growing of professional contractors who specialize in these methods to turn ordinary concrete into works of art for homeowners. Millenials and Gen-X’ers who comprise the largest segment of the DIY market are also driving the growth of decorative concrete products at retail. Despite this boom in demand, shoppers for decorative concrete coating products face a major dilemma when it comes time to purchase their supplies.

When a DIY’er visits their local retail mega center, they’re confronted with a myriad of different types of products for decorating concrete. Choices like solvent base stains, solvent base concrete paint, basement floor paint, garage floor paint, porch and floor paint both solvent and water borne, two part epoxy kits, semi transparent stain, solid color stain, bonding primers, anti-slip additives and finishing clear coats fill the shelves. That’s enough choice and assortment to confuse even some professionals. At my company, Anvil Paints and Coatings, our research confirms this overwhelming shopping experience and revealed the unpleasant frustration associated with the store visit. After investing their time and effort to purchase and apply a concrete coating, DIY’ers often see their project fail because they unknowingly purchased the wrong product type for their decorating needs.

Anvil’s R&D department is committed to providing new solutions to this shopping experience problem. In the last five years advances in raw material research have produced new resin technology. Using this new cross-linking resin technology in our formulations has allowed us to introduce two new concrete floor coating products: Eclipse™, Concrete Coating and Bonding Primer in One, and Gator Grip tm, Anti-Slip Floor Coating and Bonding Primer in One.

Our research showed that 90% of interviewed customers would purchase a concrete floor coating and primer in one. Surprisingly, professional contractors also felt the same about floor coatings and bonding primers in one, because for them, saving time really is money.

Two-in-one products allow the Professional Contractor and Do-It-Yourselfer to roll the steps of priming, beautifying, and protection all into one, simple process. By our combining a Primer and Floor Coating into a single product, home renovation projects go quickly and the user is saved both additional effort and money. Eclipse™ and GatorGrip™ simplify the shopping experience for decorative concrete coatings while enhancing the user’s satisfaction with technologically advanced products that replace the need to make multiple product purchases.

Have you ever used a specialty concrete coating before? What was your experience?