So the time has come to remodel your home garage, but choosing a flooring is more difficult than you anticipated. With so many diverse garage flooring options out there, this is not an uncommon problem and you are certainly not alone! You have come to the right place, as well, as we are here to show you just how easy it can be to pick out the best garage floors.

Keep in mind that the garage is one of the most versatile parts of the home, and while it is designed to house your vehicles, the possibilities for a remodeled garage are seemingly endless. The best floors for a traditionally used garage may not be the same as the best garage floors for one that has been remodeled into a home gym. While this versatility is inspiring, it makes it difficult to name a single material as the best garage flooring—so instead, let’s look at the top 5 most important qualities that are found in all of the best garage floors.

Durability
This may seem like a given, but the best garage floors absolutely must have intense physical durability! Some people like to paint over their cement garage flooring with epoxy, sealant, or another type of painted coating. Unfortunately, these painted surfaces do not make the best garage floors because they offer no protection for the cement. A much better option would be a garage floor covering made from a heavy-duty material such as rubber or vinyl. These materials have amazing abrasion resistance and are generally the best garage floors in terms of sub-floor protection. Rubber is the more protective of these garage flooring options, as the material absorbs movements and distributes them evenly across its surface. This greatly reduces the force of impact against the sub-floors, preventing any potential damage. A rubber garage floor covering offers excellent resistance to impacts, vibrations, and other movements that may damage a delicate sub-flooring such as concrete.

Grease & Oil Resistance
If you can on keeping your car in in the garage, the best garage floors for you will have resistances to grease and oil. This is especially important if you like to work on your own vehicle or the vehicles of others. Many flooring materials can be stained or destroyed by heavy substances, so if you anticipate frequent oil spills then you will want to have an appropriately durable garage flooring. Though rubber is one of the more durable garage flooring options out there, you must be careful if you plan to expose the material to any greases, oils, or chemicals. Natural rubber does not do well against these substances, and synthetic elastomers have varying levels of resistance. A PVC or vinyl garage floor covering is a good choice in these applications because the material has a moderate chemical resistance. This also makes it easy to clean with most common solutions—but be careful! Even the best garage floors have their limits, and PVC does not do well against strong, caustic chemicals.

Slip-Free Surfacing
Regardless of whether your garage is used as an auto-shop or a game room, slippery floors are somewhat inevitable. Because the garage is so close to the outdoors, garage flooring is prone to getting wet in one way or another. Whether that moisture comes from soggy soil or an inside spill—the best garage floors should be able to withstand it all. In fact, the very best garage floors must be more than just waterproof if you want your family to feel safe in the space. This is another reason that rubber and vinyl are such popular materials for garage floor covering. These materials—rubber, especially—feature a high coefficient of friction, and as a result, a better element of natural grip. Many of the most popular garage flooring options take this slip-resistance a step further with stylish surface patterns. Textured surfaces such as diamond-plating and coin-top flooring include protruding designs that offer additional gripping points for feet and shoes. These sleek designs are some of the best garage floors on the market, as they can prevent slips and falls even when the material is wet.

Easy to Install
Another important quality of the best garage floors is they put the control into your hands! Some garage flooring options require professional installations with complicated processes and messy adhesives. These types of floors can prove to be more stress than they are worth, with tedious installations and expensive service fees. The best garage floors, instead, would be ones that are easy to install yourself, such as interlocking tiles or rolled garage floor mats. Nothing keeps the power yours like keeping your remodeling project as DIY as possible. Rubber tiles are the perfect garage floor covering because they don’t require any adhesive at all. The tiles feature perforated edges that snap-together to form a durable and solid flooring. If you want a more seamless application, garage floor mats are an excellent alternative. Available in either rubber or vinyl materials, garage floor mats are sold in large rolls of custom-cut lengths. These are some of the best garage floors to install yourself because the only adhesive you need is double-sided carpet tape! Simply cut the sheets of garage flooring to fit your space and secure the backside with tape for a sleek and professional-looking installation.

Cost-Efficient
It’s a no-brainer that the best garage floors are ones that won’t break your bank. With so many vital needs in terms of durability, protection, and anti-slip safety, the all-around best garage flooring seems like it must be some of the most expensive—but that’s where you’re wrong! Because most of the best garage flooring options are made from rubber or vinyl materials, they are usually on the more affordable end of the spectrum. Better yet, there are many recycled garage floors made from these materials. Recycling garage floor mats is not only good for the environment, but good for your application as well. This is because recycling materials like rubber and vinyl actually strengthens them physically, increasing their durability for unrivalled protective capabilities. Recycled garage floor covering also goes through very light processing, allowing distributors to offer it at lower rates than other materials. Rubber and vinyl will always be the best cost-efficient options, but if you really want the most bang for your buck then go for a recycled garage floor covering.