The Complete Guide to Safety Tape

Safety tapes alert those nearby about potentially unsafe conditions or areas. It's also called hazard tape and can be applied to walls, doors, vehicles, or the floor as an aisle or floor visibility marking tape. It can be used anywhere where there are people: the office, industrial settings, retail and commercial settings, or even in your home.

Understanding Safety Tape

Safety tape can help alert individuals of unsafe areas and, in the case of anti-slip tape, could physically prevent injuries.

Without safety tape, people could walk into dangerous situations, slip and fall, trip, or wander to off-limits areas with slippery surfaces, chemicals, excessive heat, biohazards, radiation, or other unsafe areas and conditions. Safety tape can help prevent accidents and injuries by warning people of hazardous conditions or restricted areas.

Safety comes in a variety of materials and sizes:

• Textured to prevent slips
• Striped to indicate danger
• Color-coded to alert of specific dangers
• Brightly colored
• Reflective
• Self-luminous for dark conditions

Types of Safety Tapes

The following are a few types of safety tape from Tape Jungle that you can use to prevent injury in industrial and commercial settings or in the home.

Floor Marking Tape

Floor marking tape can come in several materials and sizes. Using this safety warning tape in walkways, hazardous areas, aisles, storage areas, and other areas of your facility can help you organize your workflow and lower the risks of injury.

Mark off safe and unsafe areas by applying floor and aisle marking tape to surfaces like walls, floors, or machinery. This tape can also be applied to doors to identify exits.

Hazard Warning Tape

Hazard warning tape is a striped tape used as a physical hazard warning or to identify various work zones. It is available in 2-inch widths by the roll or case. It is a 63-mesh polyethylene-coated cloth with a yellow and black striped pattern and rubber adhesive. It is easy to apply and remove.

Additional colors for  striped warning tape include:

• Black and white
• Red and yellow
• Green and white
• Red and white
• Black and yellow

Glow-in-the-Dark Tape

Tape Jungle's  glow-in-the-dark tape is a photoluminescent, flexible polyester film tape coated in acrylic. Glow-in-the-dark tape absorbs the ambient light around it. The bright fluorescent green tape is visible for 6-24 hours when the lights go out and meets safety and emergency egress standards.

Anti-Slip Tape

Anti-slip tapes have a textured surface. It is available in bright, attention-grabbing colors like yellow, red, and orange. It also comes in black, blue, gray, green, white, and clear tape if you prefer a more subtle option.

Nonskid safety cleats are available in  6-inch x 24-inch cleats or 12-inch strips of widths of 1, 2, or 4 inches. "Sure step tape" is a nonskid tape available in widths from 1 inch to 24 inches and fluorescent colors or black and yellow stripes.

Barricade Tape

Barricade tape is a type of safety tape meant to keep people out of a restricted area. It is brightly colored, nonadhesive, and acts as a physical barrier to prevent further access.

The tape can have wording such as DANGER, CAUTION, CUIDADO, DO NOT ENTER, or DO NOT CROSS. It also comes in red and white stripes as well as yellow and black stripes, both with no text.

Applications of Safety Tape

All of the safety tapes available at Tape Jungle are versatile and can also be used for applications such as general-purpose taping and carton sealing. The following are the most common and beneficial uses for safety tape.

Floor Marking and Social Distancing

Floor and aisle tape options include patterned, solid, reflective, glow-in-the-dark, and printed varieties.

Floor marking tape can be used for:

• Identifying hazardous areas or equipment
• Social distancing guides
• Work and equipment borders
• Material storage areas
• Visual cues
• Directional marking

Hazard Warning and Identification

Colored vinyl tape in 16 colors can also be used for color identification and warning tapes. You also have general-purpose colored vinyl tape as an option. This tape comes in 13 colors.

OSHA  publishes color code identification guidelines for identifying hazards:

• Red: Danger/Stop. Used for Emergency stop buttons, fire equipment, etc.
• Orange-red/ Fluorescent orange: Biosafety. Identifies blood and infectious waste
• Yellow: Caution. Indicates trip hazards, fall hazards, flammable materials, chemicals, etc.
• Orange: Warning. Can identify electrical hazards, dangerous machinery, etc.
• Green: Safety. Highlights first aid equipment and other safety supplies
• Blue: Information
• Black, white, yellow, black and white, black and yellow: Marks boundaries. Tape used for this purpose can also be striped.
• Magenta and yellow or purple and yellow: Radiation caution

Striped safety warning tape and laminated safety warning tape can identify various hazards, complying with OSHA standards. The laminated tape is available in lengths of 36 yards and with a size of 1/2 or 3/4 inches.

Glow-in-the-Dark Tape for Low-Light Conditions

Glow-in-the-dark tape is also good for marking stairs, exits, and hazards in the dark, power outages, or low-light conditions. Unlike reflective tape, glow-in-the-dark tape does not require an external light source to shine.

You can attach this tape to stairways, walkways, floors, walls, around doors, columns, stairs, and anything that might be dangerous in the dark or that should be visible, such as exits.

Anti-Slip Tape for Slippery Surfaces

Anti-slip tape can add a textured surface with some grip to handles, stairs, floors, and other potentially slippery areas to prevent falls, especially in high-traffic areas.

This is important in places that might frequently get wet, like swimming pools or showers, or places that might get greasy, like kitchens or restaurants. This tape makes an excellent safety floor tape because it is waterproof on one side and coated with an acrylic adhesive that sticks to uneven surfaces.

Barricade Tape for Restricted Areas

The highly visible barricade tape can indicate that a space is off-limits due to a health risk, a slip or trip risk, an emergency, or a dangerous construction area. It is also used for police or fire investigation zones. Barricade tape is a simple and quick way to indicate temporarily that a space is off-limits or where entry is prohibited.

Common uses of barricade tape include:

• Construction sites
• Crime scenes
• Crowd control for events
• Aisle marking
• Physical hazards
• Radiation hazards
• Defective machinery marking
• Safety and first aid
• General caution warning
• Anywhere with restricted access

Choosing the Right Safety Tape

No matter why you need safety tape, you must decide which tape you will buy, specifications such as size and color, and where you will purchase it. You may also need to comply with the safety regulations in your area or state or federal laws.

Factors To Consider

When shopping for safety tape, consider the following factors and any requirements you may have for your specific situation, such as permanent tape versus removable tape, indoor or outdoor, color or high visibility requirements, and if the tape needs to comply with laws or regulations.

Durability and Longevity

Some tapes, such as vinyl or PVC tapes, are more durable than others, such as paper tapes.

Visibility and Contrast

Safety tape can be reflective, striped, or brightly colored for extra visibility when needed. For example, any tape used on vehicles should be highly visible and reflective.

Adhesive Strength and Surface Compatibility

Some tape is meant to be long-lasting, and others are temporary and easily removed, such as floor marking tape. Certain kinds of tape are well-suited for irregular surfaces, while others work best on flat surfaces with little texture.

Resistance to Environmental Factors

Choose a tape that is resistant to water and sunlight if you're installing it outside. Tape used outdoors needs to resist environmental factors such as moisture and sunlight.

Evaluating Tape Specifications

Each kind of tape will have unique requirements and specifications. Make sure the type of tape you choose will fit your needs.

Compliance With Safety Regulations

Safety tape can help prevent injuries if installed properly. It could also keep your business compliant with federal and state safety regulations. Skipping this expense could have potentially costly consequences.

For example,  federal law states that vehicles and their markings must be highly conspicuous. Any tape used on them should be brightly colored, high-contrast, and reflective. The law also stipulates the size, type of reflective tape, and where it must be installed, depending on the type and size of the vehicle.

The required size of tape depends on the manufacturer's certification for the vehicle:

• DOT-C Rectangular reflective tape
• DOT-C2 50 mm wide retro-reflective tape
• DOT-C3 75 mm wide retro-reflective tape
• DOT-C4 100 mm wide retro-reflective tape

Available Colors and Sizes

Safety tape can be striped or solid colors for color coding. Check each product for sizes and colors. If you are using tape for identification purposes, you may need a specific set of colors depending on your unique color coding system.

If you need to use two or more colors but can't find striped tape in that color combination, you can put two colors together. Tape Jungle carries  general-purpose vinyl tape in the following colors so that you can create any combination you need:

• Clear
• Yellow
• Black
• Dark brown
• Dark blue
• Emerald green
• Gray
• Kelly green
• Purple
• Orange
• Red
• Sky blue
• White

Industrial-grade colored vinyl tape is available in the following colors:

• Clear
• Black
• Blue
• Brown
• Dark brown
• Dark blue
• Emerald green
• Gray
• Kelly green
• Light green
• Orange
• Sky blue
• Yellow
• Purple
• Red
• White

Installation and Removal Process

Adhesive tape can be installed on floors, handrails, stairways, walkways, walls, doors, columns, and anything that could be hazardous. Tape can be removed by hand, and any residue can be cleaned up with a solvent. Barricade tape is nonadhesive and easily installed and removed.

Maintenance and Cleaning Requirements

Reflective tape and vinyl tape are easily cleaned and maintained, but some tapes have special considerations when it comes to maintenance. Regularly check your anti-slip tape for wear in high-traffic areas to see if it needs to be replaced.

Conclusion

Safety tape comes in many types and sizes. It can be textured to help prevent slips and falls or glow in the dark to identify exits or floors in dark areas if the power goes out. Barricade tape can deter people from entering restricted areas.

Keep your staff, visitors, and customers safer by installing safety tape to alert them of potential hazards and keeping them out of off-limits areas or danger zones.

You can find the right tape at Tape Jungle, no matter what project you're working on. In addition to safety tape, Tape Jungle offers a variety of tape in many sizes, colors, and materials:

• Packing tape
• Vinyl tape
• Double-sided tape
• Custom-printed tape
• Gaffers tape

Tape Jungle also carries tape accessories like dispensers.

Resources and References

Visit the following sites for more information regarding safety tape.

• For more information about safety color codes, visit the OSHA page for color coding for hazard tapes and marking physical hazards.
• Read this document or reference this website for information on federal regulations on conspicuous tape for commercial vehicles, which could be followed by purchasing reflective tape.
• Federal truck marking requirements are explained in detail on this site, including what DOT C2 reflective tape is and where it belongs.
• This page shines some light on reflective tapes, their properties, and where they are used in traffic and on vehicles.

Shop Tape Jungle's immense selection of tape and taping supplies and experience our commitment to customer service, fast shipping, and easy returns.

If you need help deciding which tape is best for you and your specific taping needs, feel free to  reach out. Our customer service representatives will assist with your inquiries and get you the right tape you need.