Mark out zones in your warehouse with the floor

Clutter in a warehouse can cause real headaches for any company, regardless of its size. Anyone who cares even a little about order and workplace safety cannot do without firm rules, a clear layout and colour coding.

Colours on the floor are one of the best ways to mark out:

• zones for the movement of people, forklift trucks and other machinery,
• individual areas – for example the part of the warehouse where flowerpots are stored, then the one for watering cans, and so on,
• areas that are off-limits,
• hazardous spots (narrow passages, blind corners and junctions),
• corridors and pathways.

What are the options for floor marking?

Common practice is to have a seamless grey or black floor in the warehouse and to mark the zones on it. They are painted on or marked with adhesive tape. Tape is definitely the worst solution – it does not last long and soon peels off, so it only works as a temporary fix. It is much the same with paint. It does last longer, but after a few years it wears off and has to be maintained. In the end it works out even more expensive, because the company has to pay for its removal and a new coat.

An alternative to these two options are the coloured Fortelock PVC tiles. You click them together like a puzzle once and the job is done. The colour is permanent and the tiles last forever. And should you manage to damage one after all, you simply replace that single piece. A huge advantage is also the quick installation. Operations don't have to be halted for long, as would be the case, for example, with epoxy paint, which takes 12–18 hours to dry.

With Fortelock tiles you can mark out anything

For warehouses, the ideal choice is Fortelock Industry PVC flooring, which is ready for heavy loads from forklift trucks and other equipment. It comes in three different anti-slip patterns and 12 colours. Using tiles of various colours, you can create almost anything – there are no limits to your imagination. You can match the floor to your corporate colours, mark out corridors and work zones for better workplace safety, or use red to cordon off an area that is off-limits.

In a warehouse, however, practicality should come before design. That is why Fortelock PVC flooring thinks of everything, and you can also purchase floor ramps – these will come in handy for the coloured lanes intended for forklift traffic. For zones where people move around, it is a good idea to choose a texture with a rougher anti-slip pattern. The same applies to parts of the warehouse where the floor is likely to be wet. You can, after all, also highlight those with a special tile colour.

How wide should the pathways be?

Warehouse health and safety rules state that the width of a route used by transport equipment must be at least 0.4 m greater than the width of the largest machine moving along it. Forklift trucks, for example, are usually around one metre wide, so the pathway should be about 1.5 m. That works out to 3 Fortelock tiles side by side. A pedestrian pathway should be at least one metre wide, which makes two tiles.

Colour coding of zones should be practical and make life easier. Keep that in mind.