Lanai
The room just past the sliding doors
A screened lanai is usually the room everyone actually uses, one step through the sliders from the living room. That makes its floor part of the house, and we coat it to look like it belongs with the rooms inside. Then we build it for island weather: sun through the screen all afternoon and rain that arrives sideways.
Tell us about the lanai
Rough size, and whether it is screened or under a full roof. Or call (941) 504-9132.
Threshold
A floor you can see from the couch
Stand inside with the sliders open and the lanai floor sits in the same view as your living room. If the two fight each other, you notice it every single day.
So color gets picked with the interior floor in sight. We lay flake samples on your slab right by the door, next to the tile or wood they will sit beside, and you decide there. There are eighteen blends, all of them looked at in your own light, which on a lanai changes through the day as the sun moves around the screen.
The door track
The sliding door track is where most lanai jobs are won or lost. The coating has to stop cleanly against the track without climbing into it, so the door still rolls and the track can still drain. Where there is a step between the interior tile and the lanai, the riser and its edge get coated as part of the floor. A raw concrete edge left there is how chipping starts: someone catches it with a heel, and the lifted flake lets water in underneath.
What lives out there
Lanais carry heavy furniture, pots and, more often than not, a grill. Furniture feet want felt or rubber pads so metal legs never drag across the topcoat. Planters want saucers or pot feet, because a wet terracotta base left sitting for months leaves a ring. The grill gets a mat under it. Grease wipes off a coated floor easily if you catch it, and turns into real work once it bakes on through a summer.
Rain that comes in sideways
Longboat Key is a barrier island, and weather out here does not fall straight down. Wind-driven rain gets pushed through the screen and lands along the outer edge of the lanai, then sits against the bottom of the screen frame until it dries or finds its way off. On an inland lanai that edge barely matters. On the island it is where a coating gets tested first.
Before we coat anything, we ask where the water sits after a storm. Most owners can point to it straight away: a strip along one side, a corner by the screen door, a low patch halfway along. That edge gets the most attention during prep.
- The perimeter is hand ground right up to the screen frame base, so the coating bonds hardest where water attacks it.
- Cracks along the outer edge are opened and filled, since that is where water would get under a film first.
- Salt air leaves a film on everything here, and the slab is cleaned of it before any primer goes down.
- The coating finishes on a clean cut line at the frame instead of feathering out thin where nobody can see it.
None of this changes the slope of your slab. If water pools because the concrete was poured flat, a coating will not cure that, and we will say so before you spend anything on one.
Sunlight through a screen still counts as sun
A screen cuts some glare. It does very little about the ultraviolet that turns a plain epoxy topcoat yellow and chalky. Epoxy left in the sun ambers and goes slick when wet, which is why every sun-exposed lanai we coat gets a UV-stable polyaspartic topcoat. Epoxy still has jobs on a lanai sometimes, as a base or a primer. It never goes on top where the light can reach it.
Polyaspartic also hands the lanai back to you faster than an epoxy job would. You can usually walk on it the next day, and we tell you when the furniture can go back once we know the humidity we are curing in.
The one exception is a covered lanai under a full roof, where direct sun never lands on the floor. That is the only outdoor space where we will pour a metallic floor like the blue one in the photo. Metallic is mixed and moved by hand while the resin is open, so each floor is its own pattern, and under a solid roof it holds its color. Anywhere sun reaches the slab, we steer you toward flake under polyaspartic, because a faded metallic cannot be patched to match.
Flake is also the forgiving choice for a lanai. Sand blown in through the screen, pollen and leaf litter all disappear into the chips between sweeps, and a small repair years later blends in where a solid color would show a patch.
Attention to detail and cleanliness. On a lanai that means the edge by the screen and the line at the door track, the two places nobody looks at until they fail.
Prep
What happens to the slab before any color
Every lanai starts with diamond grinding, which opens the top of the concrete so the coating has something to grip. Old paint or sealer comes off mechanically, and cracks and pinholes get filled. Then we take a moisture reading. The sandy ground here carries a high water table, so vapor is moving up through your slab all the time, and a coating sealed over it with no plan will blister. Where the reading runs high, a moisture-tolerant primer goes down before anything else.
Weather sets the calendar on outdoor work. Humidity changes how fast the coats cure, and an afternoon storm can shut a day down early, so the job gets planned around a window and you get real dates up front. When a storm pushes a day back, we call you before you hear it any other way.
When the only way to the lanai runs through the house, the floor from the front door to the sliders gets covered and the doorway gets taped off. Grinding dust goes straight into a vacuum, and boots stay on the protection, so your rugs never find out we were there.
We work out of Sarasota, a short drive up the coast. The drive to Longboat Key changes when we arrive. It has no say in how the slab gets prepared.
Other floors around the same house
Slip-Resistant Pool Deck Coatings
Grip for wet feet, joints carried through.
Read the detail →Porch Floor Coatings
The front entry slab, one day at a time.
How it works →Decorative Epoxy Flooring
Metallic and marbled pours for indoor rooms.
What it suits →Full Flake Garage Floor Coatings
Full broadcast flake, coved up the wall.
See the system →Lanai Floor Coatings
The lanai system page for every county.
The whole system →Longboat Key overview · Sarasota County · See the work · Contact details
Lanai questions we hear at the screen door
Can you coat a lanai that has old paint on it?
Yes, once the paint is gone. It comes off by grinding, because a new floor laid over paint is only as stuck down as the paint underneath it. On most lanais the old coating has already started lifting somewhere near the outer edge, which tells you exactly why it has to come off first.
Will the floor be slippery when rain blows in?
Not with a textured topcoat. We broadcast a fine aggregate into the final coat so a wet floor still has some bite under bare feet or flip-flops. A smoother finish sweeps easier, so we talk through where you want the extra grip, which is usually the strip along the screen that gets wet.
How long until the furniture goes back out?
Walking on it is usually fine the next day. Heavy chairs, planters and the grill wait a little longer, and the exact day depends on the humidity while the topcoat cures. You get that date before we start, and we confirm it again once the last coat is down and we can see how it is curing.
Do I need to be home while you work?
Only at the start and for the walkthrough at the end. We need a way onto the lanai that does not cross the fresh floor, so if the only route runs through the house, we plan the order of work around that and keep the path inside covered and clean the whole time we are there.
Can the lanai match the floor inside?
It can sit well beside it, which usually looks better than a forced match. Tile and wood shift under changing light, and a flake blend that matches perfectly at noon can look off by evening. Picking from samples laid down at the threshold gives you a floor that works with both rooms at once.
What about cracks in the lanai slab?
Each one gets opened up with a grinder and filled before any coating goes on, so it does not show back through the finish. A crack that is still moving can come back through any coating made, and if we see signs of movement we tell you about it before the work starts.
Send a photo taken from the sliding doors.
Stand inside, open the sliders and take the picture looking out. Add a rough size and anything you know about where water sits after a storm. That tells us the system, how many days the lanai is out of use and what the outer edge needs. If you would rather talk it through first, call and ask the installer directly.
Send the lanai details
Or call (941) 504-9132.