DIY Painted Concrete Floor

5 Materials
$75
1 Day
Easy

Hello there! I've recently started to fix up our basement and am so exciting to show the progress! Our basement has a partially finished room with a fireplace, large laundry room and then two smaller rooms for each of our hobby/work rooms. I'm starting with the first room you see when you walk down the stairs, which we will use as a second living room/media room.

The concrete floor in this room is such an eye sore. I assume it had some type of floor over it before, but it was gone when we purchased the house. I'm working hard on redoing the stairs that are also in this room, so I wanted a quick and cheap fix for the floor and decided I could just paint it! For prep, I just vacuumed and mopped the floor.

I purchased this concrete primer from Sherwin Williams and had it tinted to Repose Gray at 75% strength. Also, if you haven't shopped Sherwin Williams before, remember to wait for a sale! They almost always have 30% off, sometimes 40%.

I used a 2.5" good quality paint brush and cut in around the whole room. If you haven't invested in a few good quality paint brushes and a paint brush comb, add it to your list - you will appreciate it during your next project and clean-up.

Since my floor has a lot of glue or whatever this is left on it, I decided I wasn't even going to worry about it! This is just a basement and I'm going to have a large area rug in this room anyway.

One coat of primer and the coverage was excellent!

After my primer dried for a few hours, I started to paint. I used the SuperPaint in satin from Sherwin Williams. I had it tinted to Repose Gray full strength this time.

On the left is the primer with paint over it and on the right is just primer. I only had to do one coat of each, how cool is that!?

This floor is by no means perfect, but it's seriously SO much better. I am excited to be in this space and continue fixing it up!


I’m a total project jumper, so I didn’t get any photos of the room before I shoved everything back in and started a new project. 🙃 See how I limewash smeared my fireplace here.

This room is far from done, but you can follow all of my progress on my Instagram.


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3 of 4 questions
  • Marsha Williams Marsha Williams on Jan 01, 2020

    Don't you have to seal the floor so that it doesn't chip?

  • Kim 'Kiewatt' Waknitz Kim 'Kiewatt' Waknitz on Jan 01, 2020

    Why did you have primer tinted at only 75%? And what is a paint brush comb. Btw the room looks great.

  • Pam Rohrer Pam Rohrer on Jan 02, 2021

    Your floor is beautiful! I don’t have a floor to do but I love your fireplace❤️❤️ What paint did you use it just what I want to do to mine!

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  • Cheryl Kennedy-Jones Cheryl Kennedy-Jones on Jan 03, 2021

    This looks GREAT!!!

  • OCDorganizer OCDorganizer on Jan 07, 2021

    It looks great! I remember we had done that before to our basement floor over 20 years ago. It's time to redo it. It was so great for when our son was young and could have all his Hot Wheels tracks set up in the basement! ☺️

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