So, you’ve decided to dazzle your guests or customers with a gloss finish on your concrete floors. Once you’ve made the decision to go “glossy,” you might not be sure how much of a gloss finish would be best. Typical customer thinking is: “Go as glossy as you can get!” But having the glossiest floor on the block might not be the best option for the location, room, or expected use of your floor. That’s why West Coast Epoxy in Sacramento offers gloss concrete floors at different levels of gloss.
Levels of Gloss
As mentioned in an earlier post, choosing paint often means choosing from flat, satin, semi-gloss, high gloss, and ultra-high gloss finishes. These levels measure the amount of light being reflected, up to the level of a very lustrous shine. With additional polishing, West Coast Epoxy can increase the level of reflection even further.
Now, the well-trained eye might look at a few samples and determine which ones are gloss, semi-gloss or high gloss. For others, it’s not that easy. Thankfully, in addition to standard units of gloss, there’s also a tool that measures it. A gloss meter shines a certain amount of light onto a surface at a specified angle, and then measures the amount of light reflected back at the opposite angle. The meter determines the Gloss Units (or GU) based on an industry standard of a sheet of black glass, which measures at 100 GU.
- Less than 10 GU is considered Flat.
- From 10 to 30 GU is Low Gloss.
- 30-50 GU is a Satin (or Matte) finish.
- 50-60 GU is Semi-Gloss (or Semi-Polished)
- 60-70 GU is High-Gloss (or High-Polished)
Depending on the colors and materials used, anything above 70 GU is considered high gloss or ultra-high gloss. Getting a high-gloss finish up to 100 GU is possible — even higher than that, with the help of specialized materials like mica flakes or metallic finishes. Keep in mind that we are still talking about a gloss finish, not mirrored floors.
West Coast Epoxy has many clients with concrete floors of various gloss levels. Please look though our gallery for more ideas and gloss concepts. If you’d like our input before making your decision, we’d be happy to see your floor and talk gloss with you.