Four finishes, one slab, four very different quantities

The same floor, four ways

Every row below is the identical slab and the identical service condition. Only the finish changes. The gallon column is what makes the point: choosing a finish is choosing a quantity of resin, and the quantity moves by multiples rather than by percentages.

Solid colour

The plainest build and the least material. A pigmented resin, usually two coats, sometimes with a clear over it. It is the cheapest system per square foot and it is genuinely the right answer for a plant room, a store cupboard or anywhere appearance is not a requirement.

Its weakness is that it shows everything. A solid colour floor is a uniform field, so every scuff, every tyre mark and every patch repair reads as a defect against it. It also shows the slab: any waviness in the concrete is more visible under a flat colour than under any broadcast finish.

Broadcast flake

Vinyl chips thrown into a wet base coat, then locked down under a clear. The chips do three jobs at once: they hide slab imperfections, they hide future wear, and their edges give the finished surface texture that a smooth coating does not have. At 4 pounds per hundred square feet — our assumed partial-broadcast rate — the material cost of the flake itself is small.

The build has to be thick enough to bury the chips, which is why the film comes out higher than a solid system for the same traffic. Chips standing proud of the clear coat feel sharp underfoot and hold dirt, and there is no fixing that after the fact except by adding another clear coat.

The practical failure mode is a thin patch in the broadcast. Flake will not stick to a base coat that has begun to gel, so a section thrown late reads permanently different. That is a timing problem, not a skill problem, and it is why the batch discipline on the film build page matters more here than anywhere else.

Quartz broadcast build

Coloured quartz sand broadcast to refusal into resin, twice, then grouted. At 1.10 pounds per square foot per course this is a genuinely different class of floor: it is a placed system with real thickness rather than a coating, and the aggregate rather than the resin takes the abrasion.

This is what goes into commercial kitchens, laboratories and washdown areas, and the reason is grip. A quartz surface stays walkable wet in a way that no clear-coated smooth floor does. It is also the most repairable of the four systems, because a damaged bay can be cut out and rebuilt to match.

The cost is material and labour together. Look at the gallon figure in the table above against the solid-colour row; that multiple is real, and it is before the aggregate. If nothing heavier than a person crosses the floor, the thickness is buying cleanability and grip rather than durability.

Metallic pour

A pigmented base with a clear or tinted resin over it carrying metallic pigment, moved with a squeegee and then manipulated with a blower or a brush to produce the marbled effect. It is the most photogenic of the four and the least forgiving.

The effect lives entirely in one layer, and that layer cannot be repaired locally: a scratch, a burn or a patch reads as a scar because the pattern cannot be matched. Every subsequent traffic mark shows against it for the same reason a solid colour shows marks, only more so, because the eye is already reading the surface as a picture.

It is the right choice for a showroom, a shop front or a domestic space where the floor is meant to be looked at. It is a poor choice anywhere a forklift, a floor jack or a welder will be.

Grip, and why this site publishes no slip number

A cured resinous floor is glossy, and glossy is slippery when wet. The federal body that writes the accessibility standard requires that accessible floor and ground surfaces must be stable, firm, and slip resistant, and in the same guidance it explains why no number accompanies that requirement: the standards do not specify a minimum level of slip resistance (coefficient of friction) because a consensus method for rating slip resistance remains elusive.

So there is no coefficient to hit, and any site that gives you one is quoting a test method's output as though it were a standard. What you can control is the aggregate: none, a light suspended additive in the topcoat, or a full broadcast. The trade-off is honest and unavoidable — the grippier the surface, the harder it is to clean, and a quartz floor in a domestic garage will hold tyre dirt in a way a smooth one does not.

Where the floor gets wet and people walk on it, choose grip and accept the cleaning. Where it is dry and appearance matters, smooth is defensible. Deciding by photograph is how people end up with a beautiful floor they slip on.