Whether you have one car to paint or hundreds you will notice that overspray in your booth can cause a sticky mess on your walls and floors.

Professional painters normally wet their floor to reduce adhesion of paint before they bring a car into the booth. Most booth floors are concrete and not sealed or coated and the amount of water used is just enough to change the color of the concrete and to repel the paint.

If you are doing this in your shop you should make sure that there is no standing water before you bring the car into the booth.

Additionally you must be careful with the amount of water and making sure that you do not get any on the intake or door filters. This could cause a serious problem if you were to turn the booth fan on and have a mist of water cover your vehicle.

If you are painting at home and wetting the floor is a difficult situation you can use a heavy mill plastic to cover the floor but you should realize that paint will adhere to the plastic and basically turn it it into a huge piece of scotch tape.

I have done this a few times because the garage I was working in could not have any paint remaining on the floor after I was finished.

The entire booth area was enclosed in plastic including the floor and by the time the third coat of clear went on I had some serious build up on the bottom of my boots.

So, those are your two choices for protecting your floors in your booth.

The first method of wetting the floor will do a pretty good job for most people and it is the preferred method in professional shops where it doesn’t matter if there is slight paint buildup on the floor or discoloration.

If you are painting in your home and you don’t want to hear about the spot on the floor for the next 5 years then heavy mill plastic is the way to go but be careful because it really does get very sticky.

What about coating the booth floor to protect it from overspray?

There are some specialty products that can be used for protecting booth surfaces. Companies like 3M make a liquid products that are temporary and other companies are making sheets that can be applied to the walls and floor of your booth to protect it from primer, paint and clear.

I have never seen a professional shop use a liquid product and only a few of the newer shops that I visit use the tare away sheets because they tend to get pretty expensive.

Both products are a reasonable option for the professional shop however most production shops have enough flow in their booths to reduce overspray enough that washing can remove it. If you have an extremely high volume shop I would look into these products and then change the plastic weekly not every day.

I hope these Ideas and Tips help you keep your booth clean and a clean booth means less dust in your work.