How to make your soil phosphorescent ?

One way to guide people through a darkened space and in an emergency situation is to apply a phosphorescent paint for safety on a floor. There are other solutions to make a floor photo-luminescent (see below) but here we will look at all the techniques for painting a floor in phosphorescent (it's a synonym). Commonly, this consists of making phosphorescent strips on the concrete floor, which will allow marking and guiding towards the exits, and the system is always done in two stages: white primer + phosphorescent floor lacquer.

We use marking on the flat, in general when we cannot signal vertically (on walls, doors, posts, etc.). Horizontal marking is always a second-choice solution, because it involves some constraints related to the passage of vehicles, machinery, as well as trampling. We therefore need solutions that are very "adherent" to avoid detachment, and very resistant to maintain their effectiveness over the long term.

Achieving an effective and durable coating requires following a few simple rules :

How to apply phosphorescent paint on a floor ?

First of all, properly prepare the background to be painted, by removing all contaminants that will hinder good adhesion, by washing, drying, dusting. Determine the type of support, the material:
there are a variety of them (wood, paint, concrete, resin, vinyl, etc.), and it is important to choose the appropriate primer (imperatively white). In usual situations, there is generally a concrete bottom (sometimes smooth and impermeable, see below for this particular case). Our acrylic and epoxy undercoats allow good impregnation and grip on the concrete.

The concrete primer and the phosphorescent finish paint for floors are two-component products, slow drying, which gives a high hardness after hardening. The delimitation of the paintings on the floor is done with adhesives. It is important to respect 60 minutes between each coat of white or phosphorescent.

On the concrete primer, we will therefore apply 3 coats of phosphorescent lacquer, with a brush, a roller, or a spray gun, at 1 hour intervals. Painting a 4th or 5th coat will achieve higher levels of phosphorescence that meet or even exceed safety standards in this area. The hardening through and therefore the commissioning is at least 24/48h after application.

Beware of the case of smooth concrete

They are called helicopter concrete, in reference to the smoothing technique with propeller machines: this technique smoothes and hardens concrete floors, so much so that it makes them waterproof. How to determine it ?
Simply by doing the drop test, by depositing a drop of water on the concrete to see if the floor "drinks" or not: impermeable floors must undergo a preliminary treatment of preparation with acidic water. Otherwise, the paint cannot adhere to it.

Miscellaneous remarks

What happens if you apply it on a non-white background ?
It is possible to paint the concrete floor directly with phosphorescent, because the phosphorescent epoxy paint sticks to it without any problem. The gray background, not the white one, will make the level of photoluminescence much lower. As for the daytime aspect, it will always be gray and almost invisible.

A tip to avoid drips under the adhesives :
When you remove the masking used to paint the strips on the floor, you often find leaks of white primer paint, resulting in an uneven white line . The solution to plug these leaks is to apply a good coat of transparent first and then apply the white primer.

Polyurethane phosphorescent paint