If you’re like many southwest Florida-area homeowners, your home includes an outdoor patio area that helps your family take full advantage of your yard for entertaining. Your patio likely experiences plenty of wear and tear from heavy usage and constant exposure to the elements. And yet, you may not have considered protecting your patio’s flooring with a quality sealant unless it’s constructed with wood deck tiling, which most people recognize as needing to be sealed.

Many homeowners need to pay more attention to sealing outdoor patio flooring made from stonework because they mistakenly believe the materials are impervious to damage. Indeed, the numerous natural and man-made stonework and masonry used for outdoor patio flooring are robust. However, the professional painters at Naples-based FCI Painting will advise you that day-to-day wear and exposure to the elements will degrade even the strongest flooring materials over time. A properly applied sealer, though, can prevent this slow degradation and help maintain the like-new look of your patio flooring.

Factors that Degrade Patio Flooring

Everyone knows that water and UV rays from the sun will discolor and break down outdoor wooden structures unless coated with paint or another sealant. While stone-based tiles, pavers, and masonry are far more robust than wood, water and UV rays can also slowly break them down. Concrete, slate, granite, porcelain, quarry, and other stone-based patio floorings all have some degree of porosity, which means they absorb moisture. The water your patio flooring might absorb from rain, dew, irrigation, and other sources isn’t the problem; it’s the potential contaminants that might come with it, such as:

• Chemicals
• Acids
• Salts
• Pollutants
• Organic matter
• Oils
• Microscopic debris

These contaminants can cause staining, break down the structural integrity of your tiling, and promote the growth of damaging mold, mildew, and bacteria. Meanwhile, those UV rays from the sun will slowly but surely cause the colors of your tiling to fade.

Protect Your Patio Flooring with the Right Sealer

You can avoid the slow but inevitable degradation of your patio flooring by coating it with a quality sealer. The right sealer can impede the natural absorbency of your tiling no matter what it’s made from, and some also enhance the material’s natural look. With numerous sealer options, you should seek advice from a surface coating expert, like those at FCI Painting. Some sealers can change the appearance of the tiling, while others might make some flooring too slippery. A sealer that might work perfectly with slate might not provide the same level of protection if used for concrete. Or the perfect concrete sealer may prove too viscous for applying to porcelain. Basic sealant types that you will need to consider include:

• Penetrating sealers—deliver resins deep into the pores of concrete and masonry tiles, where they chemically react to seal from within, leaving limited surface film.
• Solvent-based sealers—similar to penetrating sealers but rely on strong chemicals to form deeper bonds within denser materials, such as porcelain and granite.
• Water-based sealers—mix with water to deliver polymers into the pores, which then bond and form an interior coating as the water evaporates.
• Topical sealers—primarily used for protective surface coating and to create high-glass finishes and other aesthetic effects.

Rely on FCI Painting to Seal Your Naples-Area Patio Flooring

To learn more about how to seal your outdoor patio flooring effectively, consult with the experts at FCI Painting. With more than 25 years of professional interior and exterior painting experience in Naples, Florida, we can pick the perfect sealer for your patio flooring. You can contact us online or call (239) 435-1001.