$5 Graphic Painted Vinyl Floors

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Painted Patterned Vinyl Floor

graphic-patterend-vinyl-floors-14

When I was puttering around with ideas for our guest bathroom for the One Room Challenge, the floor was a major dilemma. I’ve retiled floors before and… it’s intense. It requires lots of time, lots of materials, and little things like removing toilets and pulling apart baseboards. Given our chaotic house this month… none of those things sounded like anything I wanted to get into. So… I painted ’em!

How to Paint a Bathroom Floor

(Materials list at the end of the post.)

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Step 1. Sand.

This floor was a solid sheet of linoleum or vinyl or something. It has a slight texture to it, but I started by sanding the whole surface with our orbital sander to remove the sheen.

sanding vinyl floor in preparation for painting

Step 2. Clean.

With an old sponge, I wiped down the floor with TSP. Use rubber gloves so as not to irritate your skin.

cleaning the bathroom floor with TSP

Step 3 and 4. Prime and Paint.

I edged the floor with an angle brush and then used a small foam roller to give it one coat of primer.  The next day, I repeated the same step with Benjamin Moore’s Floor and Patio paint in White Dove because I already had it in my stash.  It took about 3 coats to get a solid finish. If you ask at the paint store, they will raise their eyes and tell you NEVER to prime when using porch and floor paint. But, I trust my blogging pals and used the primer first. #sorrynotsorry

painting the bathroom floor

Step 5. ADD PATTERN!

I suspect this is the part of the tutorial that you’re here for! I chose a graphic hex pattern that I LOVE (called tumbling blocks) but it isn’t the easiest to maneuver/ measure out. The basic shape is a hexagon. I made a hex template and cut it out of a cereal box. Life cereal to be specific, but you can use any cereal box.  I used a long straight edge to make sure my hexagons were in line and traced them lightly with pencil right onto the bathroom floor. I also poked a hole in the middle of each hexagon and made a mark as I traced.

hexagon cereal box template

Tracing the hex pattern onto the floor

Once I’d traced the entire hex pattern across the floor, I grabbed my Sharpie pen. It’s SUPER important that you use an oil based sharpie paint pen and NOT a plain ol’ Sharpie. The latter will wear off over time. Again… using my long straight edge to make sure my hexagons were lined up, I traced the pattern. I found it was easier to draw one edge at a time so I didn’t have to move my straight edge over and over. I had a rag/ towel on me and wiped the ruler edge after each line to prevent smudging.

going over pencil line with sharpie pen going over pencil line with sharpie pen

Once the honeycomb pattern was finished, THEN I went back with a ruler and added the interior lines that made up the ‘tumbling block’ allusion.

tumbling block pattern on floor

To recap:

  1. Prime.
  2. Paint.
  3. Trace pattern with pencil.
  4. Trace pencil lines with Sharpie paint pen.
  5. Add lines to middle of the hexagon pattern.

tumbling blocks pattern on floor

Materials

(Affiliate links included for your convenience!)

I’ll update this post to let you know how the paint pen holds up. It took an afternoon to fill in and I only used ONE paint pen so… even if it wears off over time, super easy to go back over and refresh. Because this is a guest bathroom it gets about 8 days of use a year so I’m hopeful the floors will stand up over time!

hex patterned bathroom floor hex patterned bathroom floor

Don’t forget to tune in next week for the final REVEAL of the bathroom, and make SURE to head over to the link up to see what everyone else has been up to with their One Room Challenge spaces!

Get caught up with Week 1  /  Week 2  / Week 3 / Week 4

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how to revive a dated vinyl floor for $5!

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22 Comments

    1. Maybe? I worry that poly yellows over time… and that floor will truly get so little action that it’s probably easier just to retrace the lines as needed! Also… I’m lazy. 🙂

  1. I LOVE iT! The pattern is so modern and unique! I recently painted the floors in our basement with porch paint and did not use a primer, but am wishing I did BECAUSE it already has a few chips. I should have trusted my gut!

  2. It looks so awesome! And I just wanted to mention that I painted my front stoop with porch paint over the summer, and my paint guy at Home Depot strongly advised me to prime it first, so I was surprised to read that some people would say not to.

    1. So interesting! Our paint guy said that the porch paint was meant to go on the wood so it would ‘slip’ against the primer… like the two paints wouldn’t get along. But obviously I ignored him. 🙂