How to price epoxy flooring
The full guide: costs, overhead, margins, good-better-best options.
Free tool
Epoxy flooring pricing calculator
How much to charge for an epoxy floor, worked out from your own costs. Answer five quick questions; labor rates, overhead and your minimum job are already filled in, and you can fine-tune them.
How it works
How much to charge for epoxy flooring: the method
A price that pays has to cover everything the job uses, then leave the profit you planned. The calculator works it out in four steps:
- Your cost = materials + labor (people × days × hours × hourly cost) + this job's share of overhead.
- Price = your cost ÷ (1 − profit share). Dividing, not multiplying, is what makes the profit come out right: $2,186 × 1.25 = $2,733, which keeps only 20%.
- Minimum job: if that price is below your minimum, you charge the minimum.
- Price per sq ft = price ÷ area, checked against the typical $4–10 range.
Worked example: 400 sq ft, two installers
- Materials: 400 sq ft × $2.50 = $1,000.
- Labor: 2 people × 1½ days × 8 hours × $39 = $936.
- Overhead: $20,000 a year ÷ 80 jobs = $250.
- Your cost: $1,000 + $936 + $250 = $2,186.
- Price, keeping 25%: $2,186 ÷ 0.75 = $2,915, or $7.29 a square foot, inside the $4–10 range and above the $1,500 minimum.
- Profit: $2,915 − $2,186 = $729, which is 25% of the price and a 33.3% markup on cost.
For a closer materials figure, the coverage and flake calculators' defaults put a primer, base coat, flake and polyaspartic topcoat on 400 sq ft at $693.75 + $230 = $923.75, or about $2.31 a square foot.
These are examples to show the arithmetic, not a promise of what any business will earn. See our earnings disclaimer.
What usually goes wrong
- Pricing from materials alone. On the example job, materials are about a third of the price.
- Counting only the install day. Estimates, travel, a second visit for the topcoat and cleanup are all labor.
- Leaving out overhead. Insurance, the truck and marketing are paid whether or not the floor is down.
- Treating margin as markup. A 25% markup keeps only 20% of the price.
- No minimum. A 150 sq ft floor still takes the trip, the setup and the cure time.
Pricing is the second of the Seven Systems. How to price epoxy flooring covers it in depth, and epoxy flooring cost per square foot shows what customers pay by system.
Defaults
How we set the defaults
| Input | Default | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Floor size | 400 sq ft | An example: a 20 × 20 ft garage. |
| Crew and days | 2 people, 1½ days | A two-visit flake floor: prep, base coat and broadcast one day, scrape and topcoat the next. |
| Materials | $2.50 per sq ft | Inside the typical $1–5 range; a standard flake system priced in our coverage and flake calculators comes to about $2.31. |
| Cost per labor hour | $39 | A typical floor installer's wage of about $27 an hour, divided by 0.7: wages are about 70% of what an employee costs once payroll taxes, workers' comp and benefits are added. |
| Overhead | $20,000 ÷ 80 jobs | An example year. For scale, insurance alone (general liability, commercial auto, tools and equipment) typically runs around $3,900 a year for a flooring installer. |
| Profit | 25% | An example target, not a benchmark. |
| Minimum job | $1,500 | An example; set the least you will take for any floor. |
Wages, prices and overhead vary by market; use your own numbers where you have them.
Questions
Pricing epoxy floors: frequently asked questions
How much should I charge for epoxy flooring?
Start from your own costs, not a competitor’s price: materials, crew hours at a loaded rate and a share of your overhead, then divide by one minus the share of the price you want to keep. As a check, installed epoxy floors typically run $4–10 per sq ft, and a two-car garage $1,600–5,800.
What is the difference between margin and markup?
Margin is profit as a share of the price; markup is profit as a share of the cost. A 25% margin is a 33.3% markup: on a $2,186 job cost you charge $2,915, and the $729 profit is 25% of the price and 33% of the cost. Confusing the two is a common way to underprice.
How do I include overhead in a job price?
Add up a year of costs that are not tied to one job (insurance, the vehicle, phone and software, marketing, accounting and your office time) and divide by the jobs you expect to do that year. Insurance alone adds up: general liability for a flooring installer typically runs around $900 a year.
Should an epoxy flooring company have a minimum job price?
Most do, because a small floor costs nearly as much to run as a big one: the trip, setup, mixing, cure time and cleanup are the same. The calculator raises any price below your minimum to the minimum; the $1,500 default is an example, not a market figure.
What labor rate should I use?
A loaded rate: the wage plus payroll taxes, workers’ compensation and benefits. A typical floor installer earns about $27 an hour, and wages are about 70% of what an employee costs once those are added, which gives about $39 an hour. Count your own hours at the same rate.
Epoxy flooring profit margins
Gross and net margin, and what eats them.
Estimate template
Put the price on a written estimate with scope and terms.
Watch every step before you do it
The Epoxy Playbook: full installations recorded start to finish, which you can replay as often as you need, plus pricing, quoting and selling the job.