Painting Stripes on Concrete Floors

I painted the concrete floors in my family room as part of a family room makeover project. To see the step by step concrete project click here. To see the rest of the family room makeover click here. I love how the floors turned out except for one problem. The light color shows every speck of grass and dirt my dog brings into the house. Concrete floors are easy to maintain, but I really don't have time to sweep every day. I can barely keep up with the laundry and other house cleaning as it is. I usually have a load of clean clothes waiting to be folded on my couch.

This is Roscoe.

She is a sweetie, but she brings a lot of dirt into the house. She likes to roll in the grass and play in the garden. When we first bought this house we had no landscaping, just dirt. We had Roscoe and our girls were 1 and 4 years old. When I picked out our floor tile and carpet I told the the lady helping us that I wanted "dirt" colored tile and carpet for that very reason. She gave me a weird look? She probably never had a client request dirt colored tile before?

Here is the "finished" concrete floor. Many of my projects go this way. I think I'm done but after living with them for awhile I realize they need something more?

I though about doing an allover Moroccan stencil, but I thought it would limit my carpet options? Also these type of stencils are EVERYWHERE right now so does that mean they are on the way out soon? Then my favorite magazine came a week after I finished the floors. Here is my inspiration.

I was inspired by this picture of a floor. Not the cover, although it's beautiful. It's hard to see? It's tile with an inlaid wood grid pattern. Very classic and timeless.



This wouldn't limit my carpet options.


I bought a roll of Frogtape and got started. Frogtape is one of my new favorite things. You can learn about my new love here.

Sweep the floors of any dust before you start so you get good tape adhesion.

After moving the furniture out of the room again (It's a good workout) I made a grid pattern with string to determine where my stripes would be. I left the armour in the room and worked around it. It's really heavy and Mr. Muscles(my husband) was at work.


The focal point of the room will be the fireplace once the mantel is completed. I started here at the center of the fireplace. A chalk line would probably work for this part of the project, but the string worked great too. I used blue tape for the string. I wasn't taking anymore chances with the orange tape pulling up the floor paint.



I made sure the intersections were square.



Lining the stripes up with my existing tile grout lines adjacent to the concrete floor made the project easier. I made the boxes six feet big or four tiles big. The string line layout gave me a good sense of what the finished project would look like. I think I would have wasted tape if I hadn't first laid out the string. At $10 a roll I didn't want to waste any of it.



Once I determined where my lines would go I started taping. I laid a piece of chair rail molding on top of the string to determine a consistent width of stripe.




I cut out the intersecting tape with a box cutter and a ruler.

At this point I'm loving the green! Green is one of my favorite colors. Can I just leave it like this? My office used to be painted a bright green color before my daughter took it over as her room. This tape reminds me of that color. I miss having an office.

I guess the tape wouldn't last very long so on to paint.
This is the same paint I mixed up for my floor border.

Once your done taping the rest of the project is fast and easy. I painted two coats of this color.
Here it is almost dry.

Then I did a dry brush technique of a lighter glaze over the top.

Here's what it looked like before removing the tape.

Look how good the Frogtape works. A perfectly clean edge.

I'm loving the grid of stripes.

Do I have to put the furniture back or can we just turn it into a dance floor or a broom hockey court?

I added a gray square to the stripe intersections.

I added a circle onto the square at each intersection.

The eye is drawn to the stripes now instead of every little fleck of dust. I will still need to sweep often, but not everyday.

The fireplace mantle is the next project. I went and looked at molding with my dad yesterday.

I still like the double stripe look of the green tape so maybe after living with it this way for awhile I' ll add another stripe to the grid?

I need to add a couple coats of acrylic polyurethane too, but we are having friends over for dinner so that will have to wait. More furniture moving!

Thanks for checking it out!