Top Tips for Warehouse Flooring Safety

Any warehouse is full of potential hazards, with warehouse flooring a particular area of concern. From signage to painting, or even creating walkways for pedestrians, we thought we’d compile a list of our top tips for simple ways to make your warehouse a safer place.

Warehouse Floor Painting

Warehouse floor painting serves many purposes, be it identifying spaces for specific tasks, highlighting warehouse hazards or just making it clear where you need to go. These visual clues are vital for keeping a warehouse a safe space, but let’s strip it back even further.

Before you start applying the finer details to your floor, it’s important to start off with a solid foundation. Choosing anti-slip floor paint provides secure footing for anyone walking through the warehouse. The paint leaves a textured finish, making it less slippery and reducing the risk of trips and falls.

We can’t overestimate how critical it is to get your warehouse flooring right, especially as there are laws in place to say the floor must be suitable for the tasks at hand[1]. It’s also much easier to add your safety markings once you’ve established a solid base.

Colour-Coding and Signage

A well-organised warehouse is a safer warehouse, and that’s why we advocate using colour-coded markings and signage.

Markings on your warehouse flooring make it quick and easy for the human eye to identify:

• Walkways
• Traffic direction
• Emergency exits
• Storage locations
• Safety information

Plus any other areas you want to display. By colour-coding your system, it’s even easier to process what the markings mean. For example, use red to outline where fire extinguishers are stored or designate colours for each loading bay.

Adding signage into the mix is another way to ensure anyone in the warehouse, be it staff, contractors or visitors has visible reminders of hazards to be aware of. Make sure the signs are easily visible and adhere to any regulations for your workplace.

You may choose to use floor paint to add extra markings and signs at the end of aisles. This reminds pedestrians and forklift drivers to take extra care with where they’re going to minimise the chance of accidents.

Walkways

Warehouses often have people and vehicles, such as forklifts, moving around at the same time. With the best care in the world, it’s difficult to see what’s around you when navigating a forklift with fully-loaded pallets and high aisles.

Marking out pedestrian walkways and designated areas for vehicles is a simple yet effective way to increase your warehouse floor safety.

While you expect personnel to exercise caution in all warehouse areas, extra markings and signage draw attention to where they need to take particular care.

In Summary

While we advocate warehouse floor painting as a means of keeping organised, it’s also a legal requirement to implement safety measures in places of work. Adding stripes and markings to your warehouse flooring is an easily identifiable way to map out safety areas, no-go zones and pedestrian walkways. All of which are elements of maintaining a safe working environment.

We at BC Paints have nearly 30 years of experience manufacturing quality industrial paints you can trust. They’re designed to be hard-wearing and durable, meaning you spend less time applying paint and more time in a fully-functioning warehouse.

Contact our friendly and experienced team today to discuss your paint requirements.