Coating a table top, bar top, or countertop with a suitable sealant is crucial for keeping it fresh and healthy, and ensuring it a long lifespan. This is especially important for bar tops, which tend to be placed in high-traffic areas and are often treated roughly by patrons.
Discovering what your bar top coating options are—then learning about the optimal coating used on bar tops—is the essential first step to providing your bar top with a long-lasting finish that will preserve its integrity and aesthetic appeal for many years.
In this article, we'll explain what coating is used on bar tops most frequently—and why that coating is the ideal choice for a bar top finish.
What coating is used on bar tops?
There are a variety of options for bar top coatings/sealants these days, but many of them don't hold up long term, requiring regular maintenance or reapplication.
Sealants such as lacquer, hardwax oil, tung oil, and polyurethane are all viable choices, but each of them tends to fail at some point in the otherwise lengthy lifespan of a typical bar top.
Click here to learn more about the various bar top sealants.
To truly achieve a beautiful, enduring finish that will stand the test of time, you'll want to use a bar top coating that can handle it all—epoxy resin.
Epoxy resin, the best sealant coating to use on bar tops.
In most situations, epoxy resin is the perfect coating to use on a bar top. This is because it's the strongest, most durable finish option—desirable for such a high-value fixture.
With a premium-grade epoxy coating on your bar top, you get:
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A rock-solid finish. An epoxy bar top coating can withstand intense force and harsh treatment effortlessly—even outdoors.
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A crystal-clear surface. Once it's been applied to a bar top substrate, good epoxy resin will cure to a transparent, high-gloss finish with a glasslike appearance.
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An extended lifespan. A proper epoxy finish will last a minimum of 7 years, without the need for a refresh. When it finally does require one, a light sanding and an additional coat is all you need to get your finish looking good as new.
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A low-maintenance seal. Epoxy's intricately smooth bond prevents debris and moisture from seeping through its exterior, making it easy to clean and maintain.
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An easy application. With many sealants, the application process can be an arduous task. But with epoxy, it becomes a simple, straightforward affair.
At the end of the day, bar top epoxy is the ultimate solution for safeguarding your bar top. It will keep it clean and usable as a resilient, food-safe surface that showcases the natural beauty of substrate materials.
Epoxy resin can also be customized to suit your preferences.
An epoxy resin bar top coating can also be customized in various ways. With epoxy pigments, you can give any resin finish a stunning, opaque tint imbued with deep or vibrant tones that delicately shimmer in the light.
Additionally, because of its free-flowing liquid state prior to curing, epoxy is also receptive to the embedding of small items, such as bottle caps, coins, memorabilia, sea shells, and so much more. These objects can be adhered to a bar top substrate in advance, or you can affix them deliberately after a applying an epoxy seal coating to position them in the most pleasing arrangement.
UltraClear Bar Top Epoxy: The ultimate protection for bar tops
When it comes to protection and visual appeal, our epoxy products are second to none. For bar tops in need of a protective coating, you can't go wrong with our UltraClear Bar Top Epoxy.
Excelling in durability and visual clarity, with effortless ease-of-use for a smooth, stress-free application, our top-shelf Bar Top Epoxy is the ideal choice for anyone wanting a long-lasting, low-maintenance finish.
Not only does it surpass other brands in terms of hardness—scoring a 98 on the Shore D hardness scale!—but it also serves as a cost-effective approach to keeping your bar top in impeccable shape.
Now then, what coating is used on bar tops? The answer is epoxy resin—if you want to keep your bar in peak condition!
Additional Resources
We hope this explainer has answered some of your questions. Below, we've listed a few additional resources you may find of use:
- How much does it cost to epoxy a bar top? - Learn how to estimate the costs of an epoxy bar top finish with this handy guide.
- Epoxy: Proper storage, shelf life, and preventing "yellowing" - Knowing how to store your epoxy when you're not ready to use it can help preserve its shelf life.
- Our top 10 epoxy resin FAQs - Learn the answers to 10 of the most frequently asked questions about epoxy resin.
Have questions? Want advice? Contact us!
If you have any questions about coatings used for bar tops, or if you'd like assistance in planning a bar top project of your own, please reach out to us at UltraClear Epoxy—our epoxy experts are ready to assist!
You can contact us via phone or email here. During business hours, you can also text chat online with one of our resin specialists by clicking the Help button at the bottom of your screen.
In our online store, you'll find a variety of useful tools and supplies, ideal for resin projects, plus our award-winning UltraClear Bar & Table Top Epoxy and our UltraClear Deep Pour Epoxy.
