Car Park Line Marking

Car park marking is the most visible thing most people ever see us do, and the part most often specified badly. A car park is a piece of traffic engineering with a legal overlay, not a blank surface with white lines on it.

Standard bays, and their dimensions, which govern how many you actually fit. Accessible bays with the wheelchair symbol and the hatched transfer zone either side, which is the part most often left out and the part most likely to generate a complaint. Electric vehicle charging bays, which most older car parks are still retrofitting. Parent and child bays, motorcycle areas, loading zones, hatching, directional arrows, aisle lines, bay numbering and the entrance and exit markings that make one-way circulation work.

Surface decides material. On external asphalt, thermoplastic gives the longest service life and the best night visibility. On a concrete or power-floated internal deck, thermoplastic will not bond reliably and the answer is usually epoxy or MMA, both of which cure hard and take tyre scrub. In a multi-storey with a waterproof deck coating, the marking has to be compatible with the coating system, and that is a question for the coating manufacturer before it is a question for us.

MMA earns its cost where the car park cannot close for long: it cures in well under an hour, so a level can be marked overnight and open in the morning.

Existing markings usually have to come off rather than be painted over, because a new line laid on a failing old one fails with it. Removal is by shot blasting or grinding, both of which need the surface made good afterwards. The surface then has to be clean, dry and above temperature, which outdoors is a forecast question.

Most car parks are marked in phases so the operation continues: a bay block or a deck at a time, overnight or on the quietest day, with the marked area barriered until it takes traffic.

We are based at Little Westerhill Farm near Maidstone in Kent. Kent, London, Sussex, Essex and the wider South East are covered from our own yard, and longer programmes are mobilised UK wide. Car park work is part of our line marking service, which also covers airfields, highways and industrial floors.