Local garage, commercial, and concrete floor coating specialists
You’re probably here because a concrete floor somewhere in your house or business isn’t doing its job anymore. Maybe it’s a garage floor covered in oil stains and tire marks. Maybe it’s a basement that gets damp every spring.
Or maybe you run a shop, warehouse, or restaurant kitchen and the bare concrete is starting to crack and pit under daily traffic. Epoxy flooring solves all three problems, and we install it across the Triangle every week.
We’re going to tell you what the process actually looks like, what it costs, which products we use, and what to expect once the floor is down. No fluff, just the information you need before you call a us.
What Epoxy Flooring Actually Is
Epoxy is a two part resin system: a resin and a hardener that chemically bond when mixed, forming a hard plastic layer over the concrete instead of just sitting on top of it like paint does. Once cured, it’s chemical resistant, doesn’t absorb oil or road salt, and can handle forklift traffic in a commercial setting without chipping.
A properly installed epoxy floor will typically outlast a painted concrete floor by a decade or more.
There’s a difference between a $200 DIY kit from a hardware store and a professionally installed system, and it comes down to surface prep. We grind the concrete with diamond tooling to open the pores, patch cracks and pitting, and in some cases run a moisture test before anything goes down.
Skip that step and the coating peels within a year or two, no matter how good the epoxy itself is.
Why Raleigh Homes and Businesses Need to Think About Moisture
Raleigh sits in a humid subtropical climate zone. Average humidity runs in the mid to upper 60% range year round, summer highs regularly hit the upper 80s and low 90s, and the area gets somewhere around 45 inches of rain annually.
Combine that with the clay soil common across Wake County, and slab moisture is a real factor for garage floors and basements, especially in homes built before vapor barriers became standard practice.
That’s why we test relative humidity in the slab before quoting certain jobs. A floor installed over a slab pushing too much moisture will bubble or delaminate. It’s a five minute test that saves a callback six months later.
What the Installation Process Looks Like
- Inspect the slab and test for moisture where warranted
- Grind the concrete to remove old coatings and open the surface
- Repair cracks, spalling, and pitting
- Apply a primer coat
- Apply the base epoxy coat, plus color flake or quartz broadcast if you’re going that route
- Apply a topcoat, usually polyaspartic or polyurethane, for UV stability and abrasion resistance
A standard two car garage takes one to two days from start to finish. Larger commercial jobs run longer depending on square footage and whether we’re working around your operating hours.
Materials We Work With
Not every job calls for the same product. For a residential garage, we often use Sherwin-Williams’ epoxy systems, which hold up well against tire tracking and hot tire pickup in summer.
For faster turnaround jobs where a business can’t afford multiple days of downtime, we bring in polyaspartic topcoats from manufacturers like Dur-A-Flex, which cure in hours instead of days and resist yellowing under UV exposure better than standard epoxy.
Rust-Oleum’s industrial line shows up on some of our smaller commercial projects where budget and chemical resistance both matter. We’ll tell you which product fits your situation instead of pushing whatever’s cheapest to install.
Cost: What to Actually Expect
Pricing depends on square footage, the condition of the existing slab, and the finish you choose (solid color, color flake, or metallic). Nationally, homeowners pay an average of roughly $2,500 for a full epoxy flooring project, with most jobs landing between $1,600 and $3,400. Here’s a rough breakdown by garage size:
| Garage Size | Approx. Square Footage | Typical Cost Range |
|---|---|---|
| One car | ~250 sq ft | $750 – $3,000 |
| Two car | ~500 sq ft | $1,500 – $6,000 |
| Three car | ~750 sq ft | $2,250 – $9,000 |
Commercial pricing works differently since it’s usually quoted per square foot and depends heavily on prep work, coating thickness, and whether the space needs to stay operational during installation. We’ll give you an exact number after seeing the floor, not a phone estimate.
Garage, Basement, or Commercial: Different Needs
A garage floor deals with tire tracking, dropped tools, and hot tire pickup where warm tires can pull at a coating that wasn’t cured long enough before cars drove on it. A basement floor deals with moisture more than impact.
A commercial floor, whether it’s a restaurant kitchen, a warehouse, or a retail showroom, deals with constant foot and equipment traffic plus whatever chemicals or grease show up in that environment. We spec the coating thickness and topcoat differently for each. A restaurant kitchen gets a slip resistant additive broadcast into the topcoat.
A warehouse floor with forklift traffic gets a thicker build to resist gouging. There’s no one size fits all system, and any contractor telling you otherwise is trying to sell you their only product.
Colors and Finishes
Solid color is the simplest and most affordable option. Color flake systems, where colored chips are broadcast into the wet epoxy, hide dirt and minor imperfections well and are popular in garages for that reason.
Metallic epoxy creates a swirled, almost three dimensional look and tends to go in showrooms, finished basements, and retail spaces where appearance matters as much as durability. Each finish has a different price point, mostly tied to labor time rather than material cost.
Maintenance After Installation
Cured epoxy doesn’t need much. Sweep or dust mop regularly to keep grit from scratching the surface, and clean spills with a mild detergent rather than harsh solvents. Avoid parking on a fresh floor for at least 72 hours, and hold off on heavy loads for a full week to let the coating reach full cure strength.
Beyond that, a properly installed floor holds up to normal use for many years without recoating.
If you’re ready to get a real quote instead of a ballpark guess, reach out and we’ll come look at the concrete in person. Every slab is different, and the right recommendation depends on seeing it.