A solid color floor is two coats and one color. A pigmented epoxy base coat goes down first and does the structural work — it grips the slab, builds thickness, and hides the concrete. Then a clear polyaspartic topcoat seals it, blocks the UV that would otherwise amber the epoxy, and takes all the wear.
It's the cleanest-looking system we sell. It's also the least forgiving to apply, and it's worth knowing that before you start rather than after. A flake floor hides lap marks, roller stipple, and thin spots under a few thousand chips. A solid color floor hides nothing. Every technique mistake you make is visible from the doorway for the life of the floor.
None of that makes it hard. It makes it unhurried. Mix properly, keep a wet edge, and don't let the recoat window close on you.
What you'll need
Products:
- 100% Solids Epoxy (RS-EP-100) — your pigmented base coat
- Universal Pigment Pack (PLY-PG) — one pack per kit, in your color
- Polyaspartic topcoat (RS-POLY-90) — your clear seal coat
- Anti-skid, 36 grit aluminum oxide (ANTI-SKID-36) — optional, see Step 3
- Crack filler (PE-85) — if your slab needs it
Both coatings cover 300 to 400 SF per kit. Spread a kit to 400 SF and you land at the thin end of the recommended film thickness; hold it to 300 SF and you land at the thick end. Both are in spec. The system wizard sizes it for your square footage.
Tools:
- 1/8" V-notch squeegee
- 3/8" nap lint-free roller and extension pole
- Spiked shoes
- Mixing drill with paddle
- 5-gallon buckets
- Painter's tape and plastic sheeting
- Shop vac
Prep
Grind, sand, or acid wash the slab, then vacuum it thoroughly. Fill any cracks and joints with PE-85 before you coat. The floor needs to be clean, dry, and dust-free when the epoxy goes down.
That's the short version and it's enough to get you going. If you want the long version, it's in the prep guide.
Step 1: Tint the base coat
This is the step that decides whether your floor looks professional, so give it the time.
- Pour Part A into your mixing bucket. Resin only, no hardener yet.
- Add the pigment pack — one pack per kit.
- Mix until the color is completely uniform. Two to three minutes with the drill and paddle at 400–600 RPM. Scrape the sides and the bottom of the bucket, then keep mixing. You are looking for one flat color with no streaks, no swirls, and no darker ribbons rolling up when you stop the paddle.
- Now add Part B and mix another 3 minutes. Scrape the sides again.
Two things to be strict about here.
Pigment goes into Part A alone, before the hardener. Add it after the two parts are already combined and you have to fully disperse a pigment while the clock is running on a reaction that has already started. You will not win that race.
Under-mixing is the number one way a solid color floor goes wrong. Streaks you leave in the bucket end up on the floor, and there is no fixing them after cure — the repair is to recoat the entire floor. Unlike a flake system, there is no broadcast layer to hide them. Mix past the point where you think it's done.
Ratio: RS-EP-100 is 2 parts A to 1 part B by weight. That ratio is a count of reactive sites, not a strength dial — extra hardener doesn't cure it harder, it leaves unreacted amine in the film and gives you a soft floor that never comes up to full strength. Measure it.
Step 2: Apply the base coat
Work time is 30 minutes at 75°F — 45 minutes at 50°F, and only 20 minutes at 90°F. That's a real deadline, and it starts the moment Part B goes in. The reaction generates its own heat, so a full bucket left standing goes off faster than the same material spread thin on the floor. Mix what you can spread, spread it, then mix the next one.
- Start at the back, farthest from the door, and work toward your exit. Plan the route before you mix anything.
- Pour in ribbons across the floor rather than in one puddle. It spreads faster and more evenly.
- Spread with the notched squeegee, working in 4–5 foot sections and keeping a wet edge at all times. A wet edge is what makes the sections disappear into each other.
- Backroll with the lint-free roller immediately behind the squeegee, in one direction. This evens out squeegee lines and pops small bubbles.
- Target 5 to 8 mil. Your squeegee notch sets most of this.
On keeping a wet edge: this matters more on a solid color than on any other system. If a section starts to gel before you lap into it, the boundary shows as a visible line, and a solid color surface has nothing to camouflage it. Don't stop mid-floor to take a call.
Wear the spiked shoes so you can walk on wet material to reach the far corners without leaving prints.
Step 3: Anti-skid, if you want it
Skip this step if you don't. RS-EP-100 and RS-POLY-90 both test above 0.62 wet DCOF against an industry threshold of 0.42 for interior floors walked on while wet — the finished floor is not slick on its own. Anti-skid is for going beyond that.
Add it if the floor will be wet and walked on: a garage that takes cars in with snow on them, a basement with a floor drain, a mudroom, a ramp or a slope, anything near a pool. Skip it in a dry interior space where you'd rather have an easy mop-down, because grit gives dirt something to hold onto.
How: broadcast the 36-grit aluminum oxide over the base coat while it's still wet, the same way flake goes down — toss it upward by the handful and let it drift down so it lands randomly rather than in stripes. Do this section by section as you go, not at the end. The topcoat in Step 5 flows over it and locks it in.
One 4 lb unit covers roughly 1,000 square feet, so on most residential floors you'll be using part of a bag. Start light. You can always add more on the next section, and a floor that's grittier than you wanted is a floor you feel through socks for years.
Step 4: Let the base coat cure
At 75°F the base coat is set-to-touch in about 2 hours and dry-through in about 3.
The number that actually matters is the recoat window: 8 hours at 75°F. That's 24 hours at 50°F and only 4 hours at 90°F.
Epoxy bonds to the next coat chemically while it's still curing — there's unreacted material at the surface for the polyaspartic to grab. Miss that window and the epoxy has fully crosslinked with nothing left to react. The topcoat is then holding on mechanically only, and the fix is to abrade the whole floor with a sanding screen, vacuum it, and then topcoat.
So plan the day around it. Base coat in the morning, topcoat that evening is the standard rhythm. Base coat at 4pm and you're topcoating at midnight or sanding tomorrow.
Step 5: The clear polyaspartic topcoat
This is the layer that does the protecting. It's UV-stable, so it won't yellow and it stops sunlight reaching the pigment underneath — the reason your color still looks like the color in five years. It's also got the better abrasion number of the two coatings, which is what you want on the surface actually taking the traffic.
Mix: RS-POLY-90 is 1:1 by weight. Power mix 3 minutes. No pigment this time — the topcoat goes on clear.
Work time: about 30 minutes at 75°F, 35 at 68°F, 45 at 41°F. Note that polyaspartic keeps a workable pot life in the cold where epoxy starts to struggle, which is genuinely useful if you're coating an unheated garage.
Apply: the same way as the base coat. Pour in ribbons, spread with the squeegee, backroll, keep a wet edge, work back to the door. Target 8 to 12 mil.
Don't go thin to stretch the material. Under-spec film is where cratering, skid marks, and whitening streaks come from, and the topcoat is the layer you least want thin. If you're short, buy another kit rather than spreading what you have further.
Keep water off it. Polyaspartic is an isocyanate chemistry, and isocyanates react with water to release carbon dioxide gas — which shows up in a curing film as bubbles, pinholes, and haze. Don't coat a slab that's still damp from washing, and don't chase a rain shower on an open patio.
Step 6: Cure and use
At 75°F, after the topcoat:
- Set-to-touch: 1–2 hours
- Dry: 6–8 hours
- Dry-through: 16–24 hours — give it overnight before you walk on it properly
- Light use (walking, moving shelving back in): 24 hours
- Vehicles: 48–72 hours
- Full chemical cure: 7 days. Keep harsh spills off it until then.
Colder means longer at every step. Don't rush the vehicle stage — hot tires on a floor that hasn't matured is the classic way to leave permanent marks in an otherwise perfect job.
Things that go wrong, and how to avoid them
Streaky or blotchy color. Under-mixed pigment, nearly every time. There's no fix after cure short of recoating. Mix Part A and pigment to a completely uniform color before Part B goes anywhere near it.
Visible lap lines. You lost the wet edge. Work in narrower sections and don't stop mid-floor.
Roller stipple in the finish. Backrolling too late, after the material started to set. Roll immediately behind the squeegee, not at the end of the section.
The topcoat won't bond / peels later. Either the recoat window closed and the surface wasn't sanded, or there was dust on the base coat when the topcoat went down. Vacuum between coats.
Bubbles or pinholes. Whipping air in while mixing, moisture in the slab, or water on the surface under the polyaspartic. Mix at 400–600 RPM rather than full speed, and make sure the floor is dry.
Ran out mid-coat. The worst one, because a coat that stops halfway leaves a hard line you can't blend into. Measure before you order, and if your floor lands near a kit boundary, buy the extra kit.
Ready to build one?
The Clear and Solid Color Floors page walks you through picking your color and sizes every layer to your square footage — base coat, pigment, topcoat, and anti-skid if you want it.
Worth reading alongside this: how to mix color into epoxy and polyaspartic for the pigment technique in more depth, and floor coating systems, layer by layer if you're still deciding between solid color and a flake or metallic floor.