Your internal flooring and the surface around your premises are a ‘blank slate’ for directional and safety signage. We show how the strategic use of floor marking paint also keeps you compliant.
The floor in any workplace – but especially ones operating heavy machinery and warehouse equipment – provides the perfect place to put symbols and words that keep people safe. You can also use paint to map out routes and to provide site guidance to keep everyone ‘on track’ outside too.
It’s natural for people to look down as they move around. So, when you buy industrial strength spray paints online, you can put information right in their line of vision.
This article explores the external and internal use of commercial spray paint, applicators, and stencils for multiple commercial purposes.
Internal safety warnings at ground level
Applying durable painted lines, signs and wording on your workplace floor helps you to meet site safety obligations. Including indicating exits or the location of safety and first aid equipment.
You can highlight hazards in your building with floor marking paint, especially when you create ground-level indicators in stereotypical black and yellow. Zigzags, lines and signs in black and white or red and white are also widely recognised as part of ‘Keep Clear’ messages.
That’s not the only universally accepted way to use coloured paint to transmit workplace information. For example, you could buy yellow spray paint and an applicator to mark out aisles and traffic lanes within your building. White indicates equipment locations, whereas blue, green and black are often used to colour code materials storage.
Common practice is to use orange floor marking paint to show where scrap or defective materials should go. One of the best ways to use neon or luminescent paint is to mark stairs or other places that pedestrians need to walk carefully in poor light.
Painting a picture of better productivity
Painting strategic safety messages within workplaces go alongside using floor marking paint to improve operational efficiency.
For instance, you can use spray paint canisters to delineate different work zones and ‘box off’ equipment or places where staff cluster to work. Or to show pathways that are logical walking routes.
When you apply floor markings consistently across your building, it creates a logical and easy to understand workplace layout. It also helps you to spread fields of operation to avoid bottlenecks or people wandering into dead ends!
How to create ground-level signs externally
HSE guidelines on slip and trip prevention including recommendations for the logical use of floor markings internally.
However, in the Workplace Transport section of the HSE website, employers can also find ways floor paint should be used to stay compliant, including:
- Clearly marking out crossings in yards and on private approach roads
- Adding widely-understood road signs to areas where HGVS, LGVS, off-road vehicles and cars move around your site
- Speed controls
- Location of traffic calming measures such as humps, junction markers and warnings about sharp bends, blind corners and steep gradients.
The HSE guidance states: “By law, road signs used to warn or inform drivers and pedestrians in private workplaces must be the same as those used on public roads, wherever a suitable sign exists.” As you can buy spray paint online from us, it gives you plenty of options to create ‘suitable signs’!
Other ways to use our durable paint include ‘SLOW’ indicators, and ground signs to show no parking zones, stop lines and the edges of routes for vehicles, cycles and pedestrians. You can also create painted road signs when work is being done on your sites, such as road improvements or new building construction.
Like inside your building, a common practice for ground signs on private land uses certain colours. For example, white paint for traffic control and yellow to manage to park.
Read more about how best to use ground and floor paint to create risk management signs in The Health and Safety (Safety Signs and Signals) Regulations 1996.
Have you ever wondered, how effective are floor signs?
The fact that ground-level markings are everywhere shows they work.
The trick is to find a bulk supplier of durable paint for floors, roads and car parks. Especially if you have traffic moving around constantly, within and outside your building.
Fortunately, Beaverswood sells cost-effective 750ml cans of floor marking paint, with re-usable stencils and both hand-held and wheeled paint applicators.
Everything you need to get your floor-level messaging unmissable!
