Recoating an Icon: The Circus Circus Tent Roof Restoration, Las Vegas NV

Few roofs in America are as recognizable as the striped big top of Circus Circus Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip. After decades under the Mojave sun, the tent’s signature pink and white finish had faded badly, and the surface beneath it needed real repair work. Rather than replace the structure’s covering, the property turned to a fluid-applied coating restoration that brought both the waterproofing and the color scheme back to life.

The Challenge

The project covered roughly 43,500 square feet in total, with about 41,300 square feet on the tent itself and another 2,200 square feet of adjoining flat roof. The tent presented an unusual application environment: a steep 12:12 pitch rising to a sharp 90-degree angle at the peak. Ordinary staging was not an option, so installers from Commercial Roofers, a Las Vegas-based, women-owned contracting firm, worked from rigging systems and rappelled down the slopes to reach the work areas. Before any coating could go on, crews had to patch and repair worn sections and scrape away decaying paint and previous coating layers until they reached a sound substrate.

The Coating Solution

Once the surface was prepared, the team built the new system in four layers. GAF BarrierGuard went down first, followed by GAF UniBase Primer to lock the assembly to the substrate. A GAF High-Tensile Acrylic Top Coat added the elastomeric performance layer, and the job was finished with GAF Kymax coatings in white and a custom shade called Exuberant Pink, matching the casino’s trademark stripes.

The Results

The finished roof restored the tent’s original look with a coating engineered to resist fading, extreme desert heat, high winds, and severe weather, exactly the conditions that had degraded the previous finish. The project is a useful example of how coating systems can solve problems that go beyond waterproofing: here, color retention and brand identity were as central to the scope as leak protection, and a fluid-applied approach delivered both without disturbing the iconic structure underneath.

Project photos