The word "system" gets thrown around loosely in floor coatings. It sounds like branding. It isn't — it's literal. A floor coating system is a stack of layers, each one doing a specific job, applied in a specific order, in a specific window of time.
Once you can name the layers, the differences between systems stop being mysterious and the price differences stop being arbitrary. A metallic floor doesn't cost more than a solid color floor because it looks fancier. It costs more because it has an entire extra coat of epoxy in it.
So here's every system we build, layer by layer, with the actual materials, what each layer is there for, and what the whole thing costs.
First, the layers that exist
Every system below is assembled from this vocabulary. Not every floor uses every layer.
Prep (not a product). Diamond grinding to open the concrete's pore structure. This isn't a layer, it's the reason the layers stick, and it is the single largest determinant of whether the floor lasts. Skipping it is the most expensive mistake in this article. See how to prep concrete for epoxy.
Crack and joint filler — PE-85, $49.99. A polyurea filler for cracks and control joints, worked in before anything else goes down. Coating over an open crack means the crack reappears through your new floor. One unit per roughly 450 SF for a few cracks; double that for a badly cracked slab.
Moisture vapor barrier primer — RS-MVB, $239.99 per 2 gal kit, ~300 SF. (Different coverage than the coatings below — a primer goes down at its own thickness.) Optional and situational. Concrete on grade continuously moves water vapor up out of the soil; if your slab pushes enough of it, that pressure builds under an impermeable coating until it blisters the floor off, sometimes a year later. Basements, newer slabs, and any slab whose history you don't know are the candidates. The wizard doesn't add this automatically — it's a judgment call based on a moisture test.
Base coat — RS-EP-100, $214.99 per 3 gal kit, 300 to 400 SF. 100% solids epoxy. This is the structural layer. It wicks into the ground concrete and crosslinks in place, self-levels into minor imperfections, builds real film thickness in one pass, and gives everything above it a non-porous, monolithic foundation. Adhesion tests at over 400 PSI with 100% concrete failure — the slab gives out before the bond does.
Pigment — PLY-PG Universal Pigment Pack, $45 per pack. Pre-portioned solid color, stirred into Part A before Part B goes in. Ten colors. It's universal: the same pack tints the epoxy base or the polyaspartic topcoat.
Broadcast — RS-FLK vinyl flake ($184.99 per 40 lb box) or RS-QTZ quartz ($200 per 50 lb box). Dry media thrown into the wet base coat, which then gets scraped and vacuumed once it cures. Adds color, texture, thickness, and grip.
Metallic powder — RS-MTP, $60 per 12 oz jar. Mica pigment suspended in a dedicated epoxy mid coat, then moved around while wet to produce the marbling.
Topcoat — RS-POLY-90, $194.99 per 2 gal kit, 300 to 400 SF. 90% solids polyaspartic. UV-stable, non-yellowing, better abrasion resistance than the epoxy under it, double the elongation. This is the wear layer and the sun shield. If your floor sees any daylight at all, the epoxy underneath will amber without it.
Anti-skid — ANTI-SKID-36, $39.99 per 4 lb, ~1,000 SF. 36-grit aluminum oxide, broadcast for grip.
The one number to understand before the prices: coverage is thickness
Every price below rests on this, so it's worth thirty seconds.
One kit of epoxy and one kit of polyaspartic each cover 300 to 400 square feet. That's a range rather than a single figure, and the range is not vagueness — it's the choice you're making.
A kit contains a fixed amount of material. How far you spread it determines how thick it lands. There's no third option: coverage and film thickness are the same dial read from opposite ends.
- Spread one kit across 400 SF and you finish at the low end of the recommended film thickness. This is the economical spread, it's in spec, and it's what every price in this article assumes.
- Hold that same kit to 300 SF and you finish at the high end of the range. Same money, 25% less floor, a noticeably thicker coating.
Neither is wrong. Four hundred square feet per kit is the right call on a sound slab in a normal residential garage. Three hundred is what you want on a floor that's going to take genuine abuse — a working shop, a commercial bay, anywhere heavy things get dragged — or on rougher concrete that drinks more material than a smooth one.
What you cannot do is stretch a kit past 400 SF. Below spec thickness is where the data sheet's failure modes live: cratering, skid marks, whitening streaks, and a coating that wears through years early. If you're between sizes, buy the extra kit.
The broadcast media runs on a different number — and it pulls the other way
Flake and quartz don't work like the coatings. A box isn't a range you can spread thin or thick; it's a fixed quantity of chips or aggregate that has to land densely enough to bury the base coat. One box covers about 350 SF at full broadcast, 700 SF at partial.
Three hundred and fifty is the number that matters, because it sits right between the two spreads:
- At 300 SF, one box does the whole floor. Full broadcast, one box, done.
- At 400 SF, you need a second box — you're 50 square feet over, and there's no stretching it. Fifty feet of floor costs you a full box: $185 for flake, $200 for quartz.
So on a flake or quartz floor the two halves of the kit pull in opposite directions. The coatings want you at 400 SF — that's where one kit of each does the job and the per-foot cost is lowest. The media wants you at 300 SF — that's where one box does the job. You cannot have both, and which way you go changes the bill by a couple hundred dollars.
That tension only exists on the broadcast systems. Solid color, clear coat, and metallic have no media in them, so 400 SF is unambiguously their best size.
Those are the numbers that drive every price in this article.
1. Solid color system
Colored epoxy base, clear polyaspartic top. One clean, uniform color, wall to wall.
This is the baseline complete system. When people picture "an epoxy floor" without flake in it, this is the floor they're picturing.
Layer by layer:
- Grind the slab. Open the concrete.
- PE-85 in the cracks and joints if the slab needs it.
- RS-EP-100 tinted with a Universal Pigment Pack — the base coat. Two jobs at once here: the epoxy provides the adhesion, the build, and the fill, and the pigment provides opacity. This layer is what makes the concrete disappear.
- RS-POLY-90, clear — the topcoat. UV stability so the color underneath doesn't fade and the epoxy doesn't amber, plus the wear layer that takes the tires and the grit.
- Optional: 36-grit anti-skid broadcast into the topcoat for extra grip.
At 400 SF: 1 epoxy kit ($214.99) + 1 pigment pack ($45.00) + 1 polyaspartic kit ($194.99).
Total: $454.98 — about $1.14 per square foot.
What you're buying: a genuinely finished floor. Two chemistries, two full coats, complete opacity, and a surface that mops clean. Film thickness lands around 13 mil at this 400 SF spread; hold both kits to 300 SF instead and you're closer to 20 mil for the same $454.98. Best for shops, laundry rooms, basements, commercial back-of-house, and anybody who wants a clean uniform look rather than a decorative one. Start it here: Clear and Solid Color Floors.
2. Clear coat — the single protective coat
One coat of polyaspartic. Clear, or tinted. Seal it and protect it.
The simplest thing we sell, and the cheapest real coating. Not a sealer — a genuine coating with real published numbers, just one layer of it.
Layer by layer:
- Grind the slab.
- PE-85 in the cracks if needed.
- RS-POLY-90 — clear, or tinted with a pigment pack. That's the whole floor. It's legitimate as a standalone because polyaspartic tests over 500 PSI adhesion with 100% concrete failure; it grips prepped concrete directly and does not need epoxy underneath it.
- Optional: 36-grit anti-skid.
At 400 SF, clear: 1 polyaspartic kit.
Total: $194.99 — about $0.49 per square foot.
At 400 SF, tinted: add 1 pigment pack ($45.00).
Total: $239.99 — about $0.60 per square foot.
What you're buying: UV-stable protection on a budget and on a short timeline. It's the right call in three situations specifically. Outdoors — patios, pool decks, carports, walkways — where UV is the primary threat and an epoxy base would be the wrong first layer regardless of budget. Decorative concrete you want to still see: stained, polished, exposed aggregate. And plain economy, when the slab is sound and you want it sealed against oil and salt without spending on a full stack.
What you're giving up: thickness and fill. A single coat won't level an imperfect slab the way a high-build epoxy does, and a single tinted coat over gray concrete is less opaque than a full base coat — expect some variation to read through. This is the system where the 300-versus-400 SF decision matters most, because there's no second layer backing it up: if the floor is going to work for a living, spread that one kit over 300 SF and take the thicker film.
3. Flake system
Colored epoxy base, quarter-inch flake broadcast, polyaspartic top. The classic garage floor.
This is our most popular system by a wide margin, and the one most people mean when they say they want "the garage floor with the specks."
Layer by layer:
- Grind the slab.
- PE-85 in the cracks and joints.
- RS-EP-100 tinted with a pigment pack — the base coat. Adhesion, build, fill. Its color is also the background the flake sits against, which matters more than people expect: on a partial broadcast, that background color is a large fraction of what you actually see.
- RS-FLK vinyl flake, broadcast into the base coat while it's still wet. The flake has to land in wet epoxy to be captured; there's no gluing it down afterward. This is why the base coat's pot life is a hard deadline. Once it cures you scrape the surface to knock down flake standing on edge, then vacuum the loose material.
- RS-POLY-90, clear — the topcoat. This layer does more work in a flake system than in any other: it has to flow around and over several thousand chips and bury their edges, which is why film thickness and a full hour of work time matter here. It also blocks the UV that would otherwise fade the flake colors.
At 400 SF, full broadcast: 1 epoxy kit ($214.99) + 1 pigment pack ($45.00) + 2 flake boxes ($369.98) + 1 polyaspartic kit ($194.99).
Total: $824.96 — about $2.06 per square foot.
At 400 SF, partial broadcast: same, with 1 flake box ($184.99).
Total: $639.97 — about $1.60 per square foot.
Note what changed between those two: only the flake. Everything else is identical. Broadcast density is the one dial on this system, and it costs $185 to turn. Full broadcast is wall-to-wall — no base color showing, maximum texture, maximum concealment. Partial is a lighter scatter with the base color reading through as a real design element.
And here is the single most useful thing to know about pricing a flake floor. The second box is triggered at 350 square feet, so:
- 300 SF, full broadcast: $639.97 — one epoxy kit, one pigment pack, one box of flake, one polyaspartic kit.
- 400 SF, full broadcast: $824.96 — the identical build plus a second box, $184.99.
A hundred square feet of extra floor costs $185, and all of it is flake. Coating that same extra hundred feet costs nothing, because the kits stretch to 400. If your space is somewhere in the 300s and you have any say over where you stop — at the door line, at a shelving run, at an expansion joint — stopping at 350 or under is the difference between one box and two.
The flip side: once you've bought the second box you'll have most of it left over, and there's no partial credit for stopping at 360. If you're over 350 anyway, go all the way to 400 and use the coatings you already own.
And note what partial broadcast does at each size. At 400 SF it saves you the second box — that's the entire $185 gap between the two totals above. At 300 SF it saves you nothing at all, because one box covers a full broadcast at that size already. Full details: Epoxy Flake System Floors and the flake install walkthrough.
4. Metallic system
Epoxy base, metallic epoxy mid coat, polyaspartic top. Marbled, pearlescent, no two floors alike.
The important structural fact about a metallic floor: it has three coats, not two. That's where the money goes.
Layer by layer:
- Grind the slab.
- PE-85 in the cracks.
- RS-EP-100 base coat — clear, or tinted with a pigment pack. This is the adhesion and build layer, same as everywhere else, and it also sets the background tone that the metallic will be read against.
- RS-EP-100 again, this time carrying RS-MTP metallic powders — the mid coat, and the whole point of the system. One to four mica colors are mixed into the epoxy and poured, then moved: rollers, squeegees, a leaf blower, sometimes a torch. The mica particles suspend and migrate as the epoxy self-levels, and where they pool and where they separate is what produces the depth. This is a second full coat of epoxy, and it's the reason this system costs half again what a solid color floor does.
- RS-POLY-90, clear — the topcoat. UV protection over pigment that would otherwise be exposed, plus the wear layer, plus the gloss that makes the depth visible in the first place. A metallic floor without a high-gloss topcoat looks flat and loses most of the effect.
Anti-skid isn't offered on this system in the wizard — a metallic floor is smooth by design, and grit in the topcoat would scatter the light and kill the very effect you paid for.
At 400 SF, clear base, one metallic color: 1 base epoxy kit ($214.99) + 1 mid coat epoxy kit ($214.99) + 1 powder jar ($60.00) + 1 polyaspartic kit ($194.99).
Total: $684.97 — about $1.71 per square foot.
At 400 SF, clear base, two metallic colors: add 1 more jar ($60.00).
Total: $744.97 — about $1.86 per square foot.
Each additional mica color adds $60 at this size. A tinted base rather than clear adds $45. And note the shape of that bill: roughly 60% of it is epoxy, because this system carries two full coats of it. The mica — the part everybody assumes they're paying for — is under 20%, and under 10% on a single-color floor.
What you're buying: a statement floor, for less than most people assume. At 400 SF a two-color metallic lands at $744.97, which is below a full-broadcast flake or quartz floor. It only tops this list at four mica colors ($864.97), where the powder finally outweighs a full broadcast of quartz. Worth being honest about the install: metallic is the least forgiving system we sell. The pattern is created wet, in one pass, and mistakes cannot be corrected once it starts to gel. If this is your first coating project, this is not the one to learn on. Look here when you're ready: Metallic Epoxy Floors.
5. Quartz system
Colored epoxy base, quartz aggregate broadcast, polyaspartic top. Dense, tough, grippy — the commercial-kitchen and locker-room standard.
Structurally this is the flake system with the media swapped, but the media swap changes the character of the floor completely.
Layer by layer:
- Grind the slab.
- PE-85 in the cracks.
- RS-EP-100 tinted with a pigment pack — the base coat.
- RS-QTZ colored quartz, broadcast into the wet base. Here's the difference from flake: quartz is mineral aggregate, not vinyl chips. It's angular, it's hard, and it's dense. Where flake lies flat and decorative, quartz builds a genuinely textured, structural surface with grip you can feel through a boot. It's the reason this is the specification for commercial kitchens, wet processing areas, and locker rooms. Scrape and vacuum once cured, same as flake.
- RS-POLY-90, clear — the topcoat, flowing over and locking in the aggregate.
At 400 SF, full broadcast: 1 epoxy kit ($214.99) + 1 pigment pack ($45.00) + 2 quartz boxes ($400.00) + 1 polyaspartic kit ($194.99).
Total: $854.98 — about $2.14 per square foot.
At 400 SF, partial broadcast: same, with 1 quartz box ($200.00).
Total: $654.98 — about $1.64 per square foot.
Same 350 SF box threshold as flake, and it costs more to cross. A box of quartz is $200:
- 300 SF, full broadcast: $654.98 — one of everything, including one box of quartz.
- 400 SF, full broadcast: $854.98 — the same build plus a second box, $200.
That makes quartz the system most worth sizing carefully. At full broadcast on a 400 SF floor the aggregate alone is $400 of an $855 bill — this is the one system here where the media, not the coating, is the main line on the invoice, and where stopping the floor at 350 square feet saves you real money.
What you're buying: the most slip-resistant and most physically durable finish in this list, in a look that reads more like terrazzo than like a garage floor. Worth knowing: heavy commercial quartz specifications often run a double broadcast with two topcoats for extra build. What's priced above is the single-broadcast residential-and-light-commercial build the wizard specs. If you're coating a commercial kitchen, talk to us before you order. Otherwise: Epoxy Quartz System Floors.
Anti-skid: when you need it, and when you don't
Start with the fact that surprises most people: both of our coatings already pass wet slip-resistance on their own. RS-EP-100 and RS-POLY-90 both test above 0.62 wet DCOF under ANSI A326.3, against an industry threshold of 0.42 for interior floors expected to be walked on wet. A smooth finished floor is not inherently a hazard.
Anti-skid is for going beyond that. It's 36-grit aluminum oxide — angular, extremely hard mineral — broadcast into the coat to give the surface mechanical bite.
At 400 SF: one 4 lb unit, $39.99. About $0.10 per square foot. One unit covers roughly 1,000 SF, so on most residential jobs this is a rounding error on the total.
The wizard offers it on the solid color and clear coat systems only, and that's deliberate. Flake and quartz already have texture — the media itself is the grip, and adding grit on top of a full broadcast is redundant. Metallic is smooth on purpose and grit would ruin the optical effect.
Add it when the floor will be wet and walked on: a garage where cars come in with snow on them, a basement with a floor drain, a mudroom, a patio, a ramp or a slope, anywhere near a pool. Skip it in a dry interior space where you'd rather have the easy mop-down of a smooth floor — grit gives dirt something to hold on to, and that's the real trade.
The price ladder, side by side
All at 400 square feet, materials only, at today's prices:
- Clear coat, single polyaspartic (clear): $194.99 · $0.49/SF
- Clear coat, single polyaspartic (tinted): $239.99 · $0.60/SF
- Solid color system: $454.98 · $1.14/SF
- Flake, partial broadcast: $639.97 · $1.60/SF
- Quartz, partial broadcast: $654.98 · $1.64/SF
- Metallic, one color: $684.97 · $1.71/SF
- Metallic, two colors: $744.97 · $1.86/SF
- Flake, full broadcast: $824.96 · $2.06/SF
- Quartz, full broadcast: $854.98 · $2.14/SF
Add-ons, at 400 SF: anti-skid +$39.99; crack filler +$49.99 for a few cracks or +$99.98 for a lot; moisture vapor barrier primer +$479.98 if a moisture test says you need it.
Why 400 SF is the number we priced against. It's a single-car garage bay, and it's exactly one kit of epoxy and one kit of polyaspartic — no partial kits, no waste on the coatings, and the cleanest possible read on what each system actually costs. Every per-foot figure above is the honest floor price at the economical spread.
The same nine systems at 300 square feet
Here's the other end of the range. Same one kit of each coating, spread thicker — and for the two broadcast systems, one box instead of two:
- Clear coat, single polyaspartic (clear): $194.99 · $0.65/SF
- Clear coat, single polyaspartic (tinted): $239.99 · $0.80/SF
- Solid color system: $454.98 · $1.52/SF
- Flake, full or partial broadcast: $639.97 · $2.13/SF
- Quartz, full or partial broadcast: $654.98 · $2.18/SF
- Metallic, one color: $684.97 · $2.28/SF
- Metallic, two colors: $744.97 · $2.48/SF
Read those two ladders together, because they don't move the same way.
On the systems with no broadcast media — clear coat, solid color, metallic — the total is identical at both sizes. You pay the same money either way; 400 SF gets you more floor at the low end of the film thickness, 300 SF gets you a thicker floor over less area. Pure trade, no cash difference.
On flake and quartz the total actually drops at 300 SF, because you shed a box: flake goes from $824.96 to $639.97, quartz from $854.98 to $654.98. Those are the only two systems where coating a smaller floor costs you less in absolute dollars rather than just per foot.
And a quirk that only exists at the small size: at 300 SF, full and partial broadcast cost exactly the same. One box covers a full broadcast at 350 SF, so choosing partial doesn't drop a box and saves you nothing. If you're coating around 300 SF and you were leaning partial to save money, go full — it's free. At 400 SF that stops being true, and partial saves you the whole second box.
There are two boundaries to watch, and they're at different places. The broadcast media steps up at 350 SF — cross it and you're buying a second box, $185 for flake or $200 for quartz. The coatings step up at 400 SF — cross that and you're buying a second kit of each.
The coating boundary is the brutal one. A 420 SF floor needs two of everything, so a solid color system jumps from $454.98 to $909.96 — $2.17 per square foot, nearly double the 400 SF rate, and worse per foot than either end of a single kit's range. Twenty square feet of floor costs you $455.
That's not a pricing trick, it's just how kits work, and there are two sensible ways around it. Coat the adjoining area you were going to skip — the closet, the strip behind the shelving, the landing — and put the second kit to work. Or trim the coated area back to 400 and spread one set of kits. What you should not do is buy one kit and stretch it over 420 SF. That's below spec, and it's the one decision on this page that can cost you the whole floor.
Prices here are current as of this writing. The wizard on each system page prices your actual cart from live pricing.
One coat of polyaspartic vs. a solid color system
This is the most common real decision people face, so it deserves a direct comparison. At 400 SF it's $194.99 against $454.98 — the full system is $260 more, about 2.3 times the price. Here's exactly what that $260 buys.
A second layer of a different chemistry. Two coats of two different materials, not one thicker coat of one. A scratch deep enough to get through the polyaspartic still has a full epoxy base underneath it before anything reaches concrete. On a single-coat floor, one deep gouge is at the slab.
Roughly double the film thickness. One polyaspartic coat is one coat, wherever you land in its range. Base plus topcoat is two, and at the 400 SF spread that puts you around 13 mil against roughly 8 for the single coat. Thickness is durability — it's simply more material between the world and your concrete. Worth noting: spending that $260 on a second chemistry buys you more than spending it on spreading one product thicker would.
Fill and leveling. RS-EP-100 is 100% solids and self-leveling. Everything you pour stays on the floor, and it flows into the minor pits, the trowel chatter, and the small imperfections. Polyaspartic at 90% solids in a single coat follows the slab's contour more than it corrects it. If your concrete is visually imperfect, the epoxy base is doing work no topcoat can do.
Real opacity. A tinted epoxy base coat covers. One tinted polyaspartic coat over gray concrete is thinner and less opaque, and variation in the slab will read through it. If you want a genuinely uniform color, you want a base coat.
Deeper bite into the slab. Both coatings bond past the strength of the concrete itself, but the low-viscosity, long-work-time epoxy penetrates further into the open pore structure before it gels.
And when is the single coat the right answer? When the slab is sound and reasonably flat, when the space sees sun and UV is your main problem, when you want the concrete to stay visible, when you need it done in a day, or when $260 is the difference between doing the floor and not doing the floor. A single polyaspartic coat is a real coating that will outlast a bare slab by a wide margin. It's a smaller floor, not a fake one.
Why people add flakes
Flake adds $185 to $370 at 400 SF. It's the most commonly chosen upgrade we sell, for five reasons — and only one of them is looks.
It hides the floor's history. Patches, old stains that ghosted through, minor grind marks, the discoloration where a water heater stood for fifteen years. A full broadcast is a completely new visual surface with no memory of what's under it.
It hides the floor's future. This is the underrated one. Dust, tire marks, a dropped bolt, road grit — all of it disappears into a speckled surface and stands out on a solid one. A flake floor looks clean longer between sweeps. Ask anyone with a solid black floor.
It adds grip you can feel. Thousands of quarter-inch chips create a subtly irregular surface that breaks up water film. Full broadcast especially. This is why flake systems don't get offered anti-skid — they already have texture built in.
It adds thickness. The chips are physical material, and the topcoat that buries them is thicker than it would otherwise need to be. A flake floor is measurably more coating than a solid color floor.
And it does look better, which is a legitimate reason to spend money on your own house. It's also the finish that reads as "professionally done" to anyone walking through — including a buyer.
The choice between full and partial broadcast is a look decision with a price attached. Full is wall-to-wall coverage, the maximum of everything above. Partial lets your base color through and reads more like a subtly speckled solid floor. At 400 SF the gap is exactly one box of flake: $185.
How to actually buy this
Each system page runs the same wizard. You give it your square footage, tell it about your cracks, pick your system and your colors, and it sizes every layer and prices the whole kit — so you're not doing coverage arithmetic at midnight and you don't discover you're one box short with wet epoxy on the floor.
- Epoxy Flake System Floors
- Clear and Solid Color Floors
- Epoxy Quartz System Floors
- Metallic Epoxy Floors
Or start at the system menu if you're still deciding.
Two things to read before you order anything: how to prep concrete for epoxy, because prep decides whether any of this lasts, and how much product do I need if you want to check the wizard's math yourself.