What paint do you use on your stage floor?

What paint are you using


  • Total voters
    71
We just use Sherwin Williams exterior satin for our shop floor. It only ever pulls up in a few small spots when tape is adhered to the floor. Otherwise, it just needs repainting every few years to get rid of paint spills and whatnot.
 
The floor had been previously painted and now looks pretty mediocre, we just wanna gussy the place up a bit!
 
The floor had been previously painted and now looks pretty mediocre, we just wanna gussy the place up a bit!

Do you have any idea as to what is down now? Take a fleck up if you can and go to a paint store and see what they suggest. Odds are they will want you to strip it before you throw down something new. Depending on what you have now how you strip it can very greatly. Good luck! How much square footage did you end up picking up?
 
The floor had been previously painted and now looks pretty mediocre, we just wanna gussy the place up a bit!
OK. I think I'd just clean it really well and roll a cost of quality acrylic down. PPG Breakthrough is an option, but a few touch ups over the years seems preferable to striping what's there now as many coatings would require. But find a good paint store that will access tech reps of the paint manufacturers.
 
OK. I think I'd just clean it really well and roll a cost of quality acrylic down. PPG Breakthrough is an option, but a few touch ups over the years seems preferable to striping what's there now as many coatings would require. But find a good paint store that will access tech reps of the paint manufacturers.
I like that idea, we are only signing a one year lease to start, so we don't need something which will last for decades.
 
Do you have any idea as to what is down now? Take a fleck up if you can and go to a paint store and see what they suggest. Odds are they will want you to strip it before you throw down something new. Depending on what you have now how you strip it can very greatly. Good luck! How much square footage did you end up picking up?
Based on the recomendation of the guy at home depot (who surprisingly seemed to have a clue) we picked up some cans of a $35 one part epoxy garage floor paint, as well as some concrete patching kits to fill out cracks, seemed to work well enough:

proxy.php


We bought some of the non-branded acid as a floor prep and scrubbed it to all get out first, then applied two coats of paint.
 
almost after every show, we, Gallaudet Theatre Arts Program, paint the stage by using, Rosco Tough Prime Black Flat. one- 5 Gallon usually last me 2 shows. (who knows how many layers there is... last time we stripped the Main Stage floor down to bare wood was in early 80's, the building is 60's).

surely like most of us, our stage is not only for our productions, we do rent them out to other Dept on Campus and outside groups, and flat is more light-glare forgiving than satin/semi-gloss.

using Rosco Tough Prime Black Flat gives me 90% no light bounce, most of our renter uses our 10' by 20' Projector screen. having Flat is good for us.
 
We just had our stage which is 3 1/2 planks lightly sanded, filled spots and two coats of PPG Breakthrough wrought iron black flat. So far I am very impressed. Spike tape pulls clean.

For those posts that have used epoxy garage paint in shop, DON'T. It cannot be recoated without serious prep work.
 
I can't see the marginal price difference between flat and satin guiding too many TD's decision making. I personally prefer Breakout Satin Black for one-coat paint jobs between production and because i hate how dirty flat black gets. You have to mop flat black a lot to keep it flat. As an LD I can see the virtue of a flat floor because light doesn't bounce (not that it affects that much), but as a TD I put satin down unless I'm asked specifically for flat (happened once or twice in the last 20 years). I only use flat black on scenic elements, legs, cross-bracing, things I can't mask that I really don't want the light calling attention to, but I never use it on deck.

In my main show we use a custom chocolate brown flooring, but again, it's a satin porch&floor paint. Satin is easier to clean, usually only requires touch up between shows (as opposed to flat, which requires a whole paint job), and in that sense it's cheaper than flat by far.
 
Does anyone Poly over there floors? We paint our stage floor for every show I like to use flat paint myself, The LD asked me constatly to use a High Gloss Poly and was wondering if anyone else dose this?
 
Does anyone Poly over there floors? We paint our stage floor for every show I like to use flat paint myself, The LD asked me constatly to use a High Gloss Poly and was wondering if anyone else dose this?

As an LD I would personally flip out if I saw someone had painted the stage high gloss. I mean, I can see applications where it might be nice, but high gloss would catch all the light, cast reflections, and be distracting as all heck for the audience if they are at all raked.
 
I've found glossy black often appears blacker than flat black.

Glossy wood however sucks for most stages events.
 
I can't remember if I posted it in this this thread or not but I discovered a fantastic product for floor a few years ago. Safety Satin by Coast wide Labs. It's available at many Janitorial supply places. If you have a thrust or Round stage or you just have a lot of painted floor treatments this stuff is essential, in my book. It is an industrial floor coating used in Hospitals and commercial buildings it supplies a tough, satin finish which can easily be applied over scenic painting and can be removed with a quick ammonia and water mopping or spot removed with Windex and a mop.

Does anyone Poly over there floors? We paint our stage floor for every show I like to use flat paint myself, The LD asked me constatly to use a High Gloss Poly and was wondering if anyone else dose this?

Instead of Poly, try "Future" floor polish. Ultra High shine, stupid easy re-coating, extremely cheap.
An LD wanting a shiny floor?
 
When I worked in outdoor theatre we used a grey-green (faded grass) oil-base porch & deck enamel which was unfortunately only available in gloss. Sometimes the floor was painted over as needed for a particular show. In hi school, the @#$% floors were oak strip, varnished (@#$%) and the front office had a fit if you ran a stage screw into them. Real pain in the you-know-what for reflections! In jr hi they were unpainted oak strip (bare wood.) Ditto college and another community theatre I worked in.

Nobody seems to look at a stage floor as if it is a factory floor where you build things (shows.) Do what you need to it for the thing you're building on it now and change it next time.
 
When I worked in outdoor theatre we used a grey-green (faded grass) oil-base porch & deck enamel which was unfortunately only available in gloss. Sometimes the floor was painted over as needed for a particular show. In hi school, the @#$% floors were oak strip, varnished (@#$%) and the front office had a fit if you ran a stage screw into them. Real pain in the you-know-what for reflections! In jr hi they were unpainted oak strip (bare wood.) Ditto college and another community theatre I worked in.

Nobody seems to look at a stage floor as if it is a factory floor where you build things (shows.) Do what you need to it for the thing you're building on it now and change it next time.
I tell people it's a workbench that people dance on en pointe.
 
I toyed with the idea of starting a new thread but as there are already so many on this topic, I thought I'd resurrect this one instead. Here's the situation. Brand new facility with a Plyron deck. It was painted with PPG Break-Through in wrought iron (satin). I have no idea how many coats or what prep was or was not done. One weekend into the first production and the floor is looking a bit rough. My main concern is that some spike tape that was down for 3 or 4 days needed to be moved and it pulled up the paint completely. I tested several other areas and got mixed results. Some tape came up clean while others took paint up. Any ideas? Would another coat or two help or might there be a problem with the original coat bonding to the floor? I'm going to go to the contractor about this but I thought a little feedback from this group might help me out.
 
The raw plyron does need to be pretty clean. We specify vac and damp mop. I had more trouble with this when using Rosco TP than I have with the PPG Breakthrough. There is a tremendous amount of fine dust on the raw plyron, and more after sawing it to fit around perimeter of room.

Since some paint peeled and some did not, I'm going to suggest - hope - that some light sanding and recoating the spots it pulled up will be sufficient. I don't really know though. One whole floor was originally coated with Rosco TP, shortly after and before we learned it was reformulated, was lightly sanded and recoated with PPG Breakthorugh and it seemed to solve the problem.

Let us know what is done and how it worked.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back