The pharmaceutical and healthcare industries demand a clean, hygienic, and safe environment—simply put, it must be free from infections. For this reason, flooring in such facilities requires qualities that can withstand rigorous cleaning, traffic, and chemical use.
Special coating solutions provide various flooring benefits in these areas. This article focuses on these coatings and how they may be utilized in healthcare, hospital, and pharmaceutical flooring.
Table of Contents
Epoxy coatings
This coating is popular in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry today because of its ruggedness, resistance to chemical agents, and easy maintenance. The epoxy coatings can be colored to suit or patterned to ensure a smooth, shiny coat that enhances the facility’s look.
It has high abrasive and impact strength, enabling hard-wearing traffic from feet or vehicles. Epoxy pharmaceutical flooring provides a germ-proof surface. It ensures the floor is not a breeding ground for bacteria and other pathogens.
Polyurethane
This coating system provides durability, chemical resistance, and low maintenance. It also offers high abrasion protection and is less rigid, making it suitable for areas where the flooring might shift or move frequently.
Polyurethane coatings can provide different types of gloss, from traditional matt to high-gloss. They are also used to produce anti-slip levels for the safety of workers. These coatings can also be developed with bacteriostatic substances to boost their cleanliness further.
Polished & Sealed Concrete
Polished and sealed concrete flooring is an alternative to epoxy and polyurethane coating systems. This process involves cutting and refining the exterior concrete surface to produce a rigid, smooth, glossy floor.
The surface is then coated with a polymer varnish, polyurethane, or epoxy resins, for instance, to minimize penetration of moisture and to gain chemical resistance. Polished and sealed concrete flooring has a low level of porosity. This makes it easy to clean and suitable for pharmaceutical and hospital facilities.
MMA (Methyl Methacrylate) coatings
This high-performance type of coating offers high chemical, abrasion, and impact resistance. It provides a smooth, quick-drying surface that can be quickly painted out into a preferred color or graphics.
MMA flooring solutions are especially useful in areas that are very exposed to moisture. They offer good adhesion and do not allow water to penetrate through the structure. These coatings have a high-gloss finish and are very easy to maintain.
Cementitious Urethane
These combine cement, urethane resin, and some measure of fillers. Such coatings also offer a hard-wearing, abrasion-resistant, and impact-resistant flooring system, ideal for high-traffic hospital zones.
They also have equally high chemical resistance and can be tinted to any color. Cementitious urethane coatings cure moisture and are quick-setting with little or no odor. They also have natural anti-microbial features that make them suitable for use in healthcare centers.
Final thoughts
Appropriate flooring coating design for pharmaceutical and healthcare facilities plays a major role in offering a safe environment for patients and, specifically, an infection-free client ambiance. Common features that the ideal flooring coating should meet include chemical resistance, durability, ease of maintenance, and resistance to microbes.
