Quotes for epoxy floors vary more than people expect, and the reason is rarely the square metres. Three things move the number, and only one of them is size.
1. The condition of the slab
A clean, sound, dry slab needs grinding and not much else. A slab carrying old adhesive, oil staining, cracks, spalling or a previous failed coating needs repair before anything can be applied.
This is the largest single variable in most quotes, and it is why an on-site inspection tells you something a phone estimate cannot. Moisture is part of this too: if the slab is carrying moisture from below, the answer may be that it needs a moisture-tolerant system, or that it should not be coated at all until the source is addressed.
2. The system specified
Epoxy is a category, not a product. A thin single-coat system and a full build-up finished with a polyurethane topcoat are different specifications with different costs and different lifespans. What is appropriate depends on what the floor actually takes:
- Light domestic garage use, mostly foot traffic and one car
- Workshop conditions with wheeled loads, dropped tools and chemical exposure
- Commercial traffic, forklifts, or a space that cannot afford downtime
Specifying a commercial system for a suburban garage is money spent for nothing. Specifying a domestic system for a workshop is money spent twice.
3. The site itself
Access, available power, how much has to be cleared out beforehand, and whether the work can run continuously or has to be staged around you. Staging a job into sections costs more than doing it in one pass, because each stage repeats setup and each coat has its own cure time.
Two quotes for the same floor can be equally honest and still differ by a wide margin, because they are describing different systems.
What a quote should tell you
Enough detail to compare it against another one. At minimum:
- The preparation method, and whether repairs are included or excluded
- The system, by name, and the number of coats
- Whether a moisture test was done and what it showed
- The cure time before foot traffic and before vehicle traffic
A single number with no method attached is not a quote you can compare. It is worth asking for the detail before deciding on price alone.
