Columbia earned the Famously Hot nickname honestly. Tires roll in off I-26 hot enough to grab at a soft coating — what gives way is the grip underneath, not the color on top.
Four Things That Separate Our Quote From the Cheap One Epoxy Floor Coatings
01
Free Quote
The price is itemized, it's handed to you on the spot, and it's the same number on the invoice. No manufactured deadline, no discount that expires tonight.
02
Diamond-Grind Prep
Diamond grinding on every job, no exceptions. If a competing quote doesn't name a concrete surface profile, ask why — that missing line is where cheap floors come from.
03
1-Day Install
Walk on it in 4 hours. Drive on it in 24. Back to normal by tomorrow.
04
25-Year Warranty
Written, transferable, and backed by the local Apex location that installed it.
500+Garage Floors
“I’m so happy with my coating! These folks are wonderful at what they do.”
— RODNEY ARNOLD, Google Review
“Elite level flooring from Apex. They use a commercial grade product that lasts a lifetime.”
— CARTER HALL, Google Review
“Apex Epoxy Flooring did a great job on my basement. The crew was easy to deal with and knew what they were doing. Can’t wait to have them do my garage next.”
— ROBERT LAWSON, Google Review
4.8
Based on 208 Google reviews
Industries We Serve
Apex Epoxy Flooring Services & Coatingsfor Columbia garages, homes & businesses.
A dealership service lane and a salon floor want opposite things from a coating. Hover any industry to see what we'd spec for it. Hover any industry to see the fit.
Explore our most popular flake, metallic, solid-color and marble finishes. We bring physical samples to every free in-home estimate so you can see them on your slab.
Printed colors may vary slightly from the actual finish. Ask for a physical sample.
8 marble epoxy designs — plus custom pours
Unlimited Color PatternsCustom pours — any look you want
Printed colors may vary slightly from the actual finish. Ask for a physical sample.
Our Garage Floor Coating Process
How We Build a
Professionally Installed Epoxy Floor.
Most peeling epoxy floor installations don't fail at the topcoat — Every layer in an Apex floor exists because of a specific way garage floors fail. Read them bottom to top and the system makes sense. Read a quote that only names the topcoat and you've learned almost nothing about what you're buying.
Sandy topsoil over red clay beneath the slab, a summer that sits in the mid-90s above it, and a door that spends a lot of the year standing open. Every layer here answers one of those, or answers what a working garage does to a floor regardless.
01
Prepared Concrete Slabdiamond-ground to CSP-2/3
Your existing slab, mechanically profiled to a Concrete Surface Profile of 2 to 3. Cracks patched. Moisture verified. Every layer above only lasts if this one is right.
A pigmented, self-leveling 100%-solids epoxy rolled wet-on-wet directly onto the diamond-ground slab. Delivers the color depth and the film thickness that separates a real floor from a paint job.
03
Vinyl Flake Broadcasthand-cast to full rejection
Vinyl chip flakes hand-broadcast into the wet basecoat until the surface refuses more. Cured overnight, scraped flat, vacuumed. Color, camouflage, and slip-grip in one.
04
Polyaspartic TopcoatUV-stable, chemical-resistant
Everything that ever happens to this floor happens to the topcoat: August sun through an open door, a dropped socket, brake cleaner, tires still hot from the run home on I-77. That layer is a UV-stable aliphatic polyaspartic. Aliphatic is the load-bearing word — epoxy left in daylight ambers, an aromatic topcoat ambers right along with it, and a quote that only says polyaspartic hasn't told you which one is going on your concrete.
From Free Estimate to Final Walk-Through
1
Free Estimate
You get somebody on your own concrete with a moisture meter and a stack of flake boards, and one installed price by the time they leave the driveway.
2
Diamond Grind
We mechanically diamond-grind your slab to the right profile.
3
Application
100% solids epoxy, flake broadcast, and polyaspartic topcoat.
4
Final Walk-Thru
We walk the finished floor with you before we leave.
Ready to book your free estimate?
Most Columbia estimates turn into a firm number the same afternoon we visit, with the flake boards sitting on your own concrete while you decide. If you'd rather talk it through before anyone comes out, call (904) 595-9792 and we'll answer what we can over the phone.
Nothing below is a catalog photo. Garages, shops, commercial kitchens, warehouse bays — all Apex crews, all real slabs, several of them in worse shape than yours. Pull the gold divider across any image and you'll see the concrete we started from. Drag the gold handle on any floor to reveal the finished result.
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BEFOREAFTER
Warehouse Floor·Industrial·drag to compare
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BEFOREAFTER
2-Car Garage·Residential·Gray Flake Epoxy·drag to compare
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BEFOREAFTER
Commercial Kitchen·Commercial·drag to compare
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BEFOREAFTER
Basement·Residential·Metallic Epoxy·drag to compare
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BEFOREAFTER
Stadium Concourse·Commercial·drag to compare
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BEFOREAFTER
Garage, Repaired Slab·Residential·Flake Epoxy·drag to compare
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BEFOREAFTER
Veterinary Kennel·Commercial·drag to compare
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BEFOREAFTER
Basement·Residential·Tan Flake Epoxy·drag to compare
Your price comes down to the finish you choose and the condition of your slab. These are honest, installed starting prices for a typical Columbia 2-car and 3-car garage.
Finish
Starting Price
2-Car (~450 sq ft)
3-Car (~650 sq ft)
Best For
Solid Epoxy
$4per sq ft
~$1,800
~$2,600
Clean, budget-friendly single color
Flake EpoxyMost Popular
$6per sq ft
$2,700$2,300
$3,900$2,700
Most garages — hides flaws, adds grip
Quartz Epoxy
$6per sq ft
~$2,700
~$3,900
Maximum slip resistance & durability
Metallic Epoxy
$9per sq ft
~$4,050
~$5,850
High-end, marbled showpiece look
Whatever gets written down at the estimate is what you pay. There's no trip charge for crossing the river into Lexington County, and nothing gets added once the crew's on site.
Serving the Greater Columbia, SC Area
Epoxy Flooring Near Me
Professional epoxy & garage floor coatings across Columbia and the surrounding Columbia communities.
West ColumbiaCayceForest AcresArcadia LakesSt AndrewsSeven OaksDentsvilleIrmoHopkinsLexingtonBallentineGastonRed BankBlythewoodElginEastoverSwanseaChapinLugoffCamden
Upgrade Your Columbia Garage Floor in 1 Day - Free Estimate
Book Your Trusted Columbia Epoxy Flooring Contractor - Free Quote
Free Consultation
Contact us today for a no-cost consultation where we evaluate your flooring needs, provide an estimated price based on square footage, and recommend the best epoxy flooring solutions tailored specifically for you.
Diamond Grinding Floor Prep
We use a diamond propane grinder to meticulously prepare your floor, ensuring a smooth, flawless surface that maximizes the adhesion and longevity of your epoxy floor coating.
Multi-Layered Epoxy Floor Installation
Our team applies multiple layers of premium epoxy resin flooring, each layer enhancing the durability, aesthetics, and overall performance of your new epoxy floor.
Curing & Final Inspection
We ensure the epoxy floor coating cures properly to achieve maximum strength and conduct a thorough final inspection to guarantee your complete satisfaction with the finished project.
We use both — that is the whole point. Epoxy goes down first because it grips the ground profile and builds the film thickness you are paying for. Aliphatic polyaspartic goes over the top because it holds its color in daylight and takes a car in 24 hours. Run them in that order and neither material has to do the other one’s job.
Columbia Epoxy FAQs
Answers From Our Epoxy Flooring Professionals
The questions Columbia homeowners actually search before coating a garage floor — answered honestly, including the downsides.
Ten to twenty years is the working range for a professionally built system, and Columbia heat doesn't shorten it as long as the bond underneath is real. Floors that quit early — two or three summers in, edges curling — are nearly always big-box product laid over concrete nobody opened up first. Ours carries a written 25-year warranty, and it transfers to the next owner.
Not off a floor that's keyed into the slab. The sequence goes like this: epoxy softens somewhere around 130 to 140 degrees, tires come home hotter than that after a run up I-26, and warm rubber grips whatever it's parked on. Whether it lifts depends on what's underneath — ground concrete holds it, a smooth troweled surface doesn't. That's why the grinder matters more here than the brand on the pail.
Epoxy will amber. It's a known limitation of the material rather than a workmanship problem, which is why it lives under the topcoat on our floors and never on the surface. The layer you actually see is an aliphatic polyaspartic. That first word is worth confirming on any estimate you collect — the aromatic version of the same chemistry drifts yellow right along with epoxy, and plenty of quotes never specify which one.
Mostly unchanged, with a little less shine down the two lanes your tires live in. Flake does the heavy lifting there — a chip blend breaks up scuffs and dust the way a flat color never will. Age shows first at the threshold, where grit gets ground in every time the door goes up. Sweep that strip now and then and you'll keep the whole floor even.
Low, and neither one's random. Blistering means water vapor worked up out of the concrete and found nowhere to go once the surface was sealed. Peeling and lifting mean the coating was resting on the slab instead of locked into it. Both get decided before install day, which is why we take a moisture reading first and then profile the concrete to CSP 2 to 3 so the system has something mechanical to grab.
Our flake system installs at $2,300 on a standard 2-car and $2,700 on a 3-car. Most Columbia 2-car garages land between $1,800 and $2,700 once the concrete's been looked over. The trade at large quotes $5 to $15 per square foot — a wide spread, and the thing that moves you inside it is how much repair and grinding the slab needs before any coating goes on. You'll leave the free estimate holding one figure.
Four hundred square feet, so you're in ordinary 2-car pricing and $2,300 is the reference number on sound concrete. What adds to it is whatever the grinder turns up: a pitted strip inside the door, cracks that need chasing, or an old sealer that has to come off before anything new goes down. Older Shandon and Rosewood garages carry more of that than a Lake Carolina build does.
National figures put a professional install at $1,500 to $4,000 and a shelf kit at $300 to $900. Real Columbia quotes cluster much tighter — $1,800 to $2,700 for a coating that's built rather than painted on. If a bid comes in far under that, nothing clever has happened. Something got left out of the scope, and it's usually the machine time.
Partly because Columbia slabs genuinely differ. A 1920s Shandon garage with old oil driven into it and a converted Rosewood carport carrying two concrete ages in one bay aren't the same job as a ten-year-old Woodcreek Farms floor. The rest is scope. A cheap bid usually means no diamond grinding, no crack repair, and no moisture reading — three things you can't inspect once the coating's down and can't add afterward.
The whole build, itemized: moisture testing, diamond-grind prep to a CSP 2 to 3 profile, crack and pit repair, a pigmented 100%-solids epoxy basecoat, vinyl flake broadcast to full rejection, and an aliphatic polyaspartic topcoat. The written, transferable 25-year warranty comes with it. There's no mobilization fee and no mileage line for a run out to Chapin or Camden. What you're quoted is what you're billed.
Tile runs higher, mostly on labor, and garage grout becomes a maintenance item within a year. Polished concrete prices out close to a coating, but you're buying two different things. Polishing works the concrete that's already there. A coating adds material over it — which is where color, flake texture, and a non-porous surface come from. Polished gray stays gray, and it still takes on oil.
Residential garages are a one-day job, which is why we hear from so many Fort Jackson families working against PCS orders. Grinding and repairs happen early, the pigmented base goes down with flake hand-cast into it wet, and once the flake is scraped and vacuumed the polyaspartic seals it that same afternoon. Commercial and industrial slabs are a different scope and can take two days — you'll know that at the quote.
Four hours before you're walking on it, twenty-four before a car goes back in. Polyaspartic buys that turnaround; a floor finished in epoxy alone would keep the garage out of service for the better part of a week. That gap rarely appears on a quote sheet, and it's worth asking about — a week of parking in a Columbia driveway in July is a real cost, even if nobody prices it.
Three coats over bare concrete, and a fourth underneath when the moisture reading calls for a vapor-barrier primer. Working up from the slab: pigmented 100%-solids epoxy rolled wall to wall, vinyl flake broadcast until the surface won't take another chip, then a clear aliphatic polyaspartic. In between, once the flake bed has firmed up enough to work, it gets scraped down and vacuumed off — same visit, hours rather than overnight. Nobody photographs that step, and it's the one that decides how the floor feels underfoot.
There's very little to it. A broom handles most weeks, and warm water with a mild cleaner handles the rest. Nothing needs waxing and there's no annual sealer to buy back from us. Because there are no pores left in the surface, whatever comes off a boat trailer back from Lake Murray, drips out of a mower, or blows in as sandy grit stays on top and lifts with a hose or a rag.
Yes, and locally rather than end to end. The damaged spot gets ground back, rebuilt, and re-flaked with the same blend — we keep your blend on file with the job, so matching it in year six isn't guesswork. Blending into a chip pattern is far more forgiving than blending into a solid color, and that's one practical reason we point most garages toward flake.
Any month works, though the reasons to pick one are practical rather than chemical. Polyaspartic cures across a wide temperature range and the work happens inside your garage, so the calendar isn't a constraint. What we do watch is slab temperature on a muggy morning, because concrete sitting at the dew point won't take a coating properly — we check it with an infrared gun on the day. Spring and early summer book up around PCS season, so call ahead.
They're not alternatives, they're two positions in the same floor. Epoxy carries the film build, the pigment, and the mechanical grip down into ground concrete. Polyaspartic goes on last because it cures in hours and holds up under UV and heat. Being asked to choose between them usually means somebody's telling you what's on the truck rather than what your slab needs. Every floor we install uses both.
Depends which layer you're asking about. As a wear surface, polyaspartic beats epoxy on UV stability, cure speed, and heat tolerance — all three matter more in Columbia than they would further north. As a base, nothing puts real film thickness on a slab for the money the way 100%-solids epoxy does. The one-coat systems marketed as replacements do cure fast, but they go on thin, and film thickness is most of what you're paying for.
Total build, not product name. Two crews can open the same pails and hand you floors that don't behave anything alike, because the variable is how deep the concrete got opened and how much material ended up bonded to it. Ours is ground concrete, a 100%-solids epoxy body coat, flake broadcast to full coverage, and an aliphatic polyaspartic wear layer. Ask any contractor how deep they grind before you ask what brand they carry.
You can go that route, and on a garage that mostly stores things a kit may hold for a while. What sinks them is the prep step: kits ship with an acid wash, and acid doesn't open concrete anywhere near the way diamond tooling does, so the film sits on the surface instead of biting in. Most start letting go inside five years. Add up tooling, material, and two days of your own time before you decide.
Only if what's there isn't genuinely sound, and a lot of what we find in older Columbia garages isn't — thin paint from the 1990s, or a sealer somebody rolled on and forgot about. Anything chalking, blistering, or lifting comes off completely, because a new floor is only as attached as the layer beneath it. Stripping shows up as its own line on the estimate, so you can see exactly what the old coating costs you.
For most people here, plenty — and the argument is less about looks than about dust. Bare concrete gives off fine powder every time you sweep it, drinks up oil for good, and holds the sandy grit that rides in on tires from every driveway in the Midlands. Sealed, the same floor rinses and dries. All of that depends on the prep, though. Roll a coating onto concrete nobody ground and you've bought yourself a second project.
Three real drawbacks, and you should hear them before you sign anything. Any glossy coating is slick with water on it. Epoxy left exposed to sun loses color. And an install that skipped the grinder will peel, which is the expensive one to undo. Our answers are a full flake broadcast for texture, an aliphatic topcoat instead of bare epoxy, and mechanical profiling underneath — but they're real drawbacks, not marketing objections.
Two situations. If a slab is pushing moisture up from below and nothing's been done about the source, sealing it just relocates the problem to the bond line. And if the concrete is still moving, a coating will follow the crack rather than hold it shut. Columbia sits where the Sandhills meet the Piedmont — sandy on top, red clay below — so drainage varies more lot to lot than people expect. We test before we quote, and if the reading says wait, that's what you'll hear.
Smooth gloss can be slick. That's not what we build. Vinyl chips get broadcast into the basecoat while it's still wet, which leaves a fine texture you can feel through a shoe sole rather than a sheet of glass. It's the thing you notice pulling a wet boat trailer back from Lake Murray, or walking in after an afternoon storm. If a garage gets rinsed out often, extra slip aggregate can go into the topcoat.
It won't move an appraisal much. Where it counts is the walk-through, and Columbia has a lot of those — Fort Jackson keeps families buying and selling on orders, often deciding on a short trip into town. A coated garage photographs well, and it's one of the few upgrades a buyer takes in within ten seconds of opening the door. The 25-year warranty transfers with the house, so it's worth a line in the listing.
Heat is the real variable here, and it's a different conversation from the one coastal pages have about salt. A closed garage on a hundred-degree Columbia afternoon runs hotter still, and a south- or west-facing door standing open puts direct sun on the first stretch of floor. Both are topcoat problems. We use an aliphatic polyaspartic on top, which stays hard through summer and holds its color, instead of leaving epoxy exposed to either.
It's worth testing for, which is what we do before quoting. Columbia sits on the seam between the Sandhills and the Piedmont — loose sand near the surface, red clay below it — and the two drain very differently. Sand sheds water quickly, clay holds it, and a slab poured onto that clay layer doesn't get much chance to dry from underneath. Whether it matters on your floor is a reading, not a guess.
It changes the job more than the address does. Wildewood was built out in sections across thirty-odd years, so one street can be 1970s concrete and the next 2000s concrete poured over a modern vapor retarder. Shandon garages are older still, and plenty went in with nothing underneath them at all. Rosewood has converted carports where a newer, thinner pour meets an older one inside a single bay. We don't quote by neighborhood — we read the slab in front of us.
All of Richland County, and a good way past it. On this side of the river: Forest Acres, Arcadia Lakes, Dentsville, St Andrews, Hopkins, Ballentine, Eastover and Blythewood. Across in Lexington County: West Columbia, Cayce, Seven Oaks, Lexington, Red Bank, Gaston, Swansea and Chapin — plus Irmo, which straddles the line. We also run out to Elgin, Lugoff, Camden and Winnsboro. If you don't see your street, call (904) 595-9792 and ask.
Customer Reviews
Apex Reviews From the Columbia area
5Based on 208 Google reviews across all our locations
SSuzanne Doblera week ago
Blake and his crew did a great job of preparing our previously coated floor by diamond grinding it, vacuuming it and then applying their epoxy with flakes and non slip top coat. Our garage floor was transformed. The crew was friendly and communication on all aspects of the job was top notch.
KKaren Garcia6 months ago
What a great experience working with Apex Epoxy Flooring! The team was professional, punctual, detailed, and gave me great advice for maintaing the floor. My 20x22 sqft garage floor has never looked so good.
CCarter Hall7 months ago
Elite level flooring from Apex. They use a commercial grade product that lasts a lifetime.
EEdith Hart8 months ago
Apex's suggestion to go with epoxy instead of floor paint when I first called them for info was spot on. We’re really happy with how our basement floor turned out and the fact that it is safe if it floods agian. Big thanks to Apex for a fabulous job!
RRobert Lawson8 months ago
Apex Epoxy Flooring did a great job on my basement. The crew was easy to deal with and knew what they were doing. Can’t wait to have them do my garage next.
AAndrew Cliffhinger9 months ago
Apex Epoxy Flooring of Columbia gave my two car garage a flake epoxy floor for a very decent price. Their deal on the 2 car garage is well worth the product they use. If you need epoxy work around Columbia, Apex is the way to go.
For just $2,700, give your 3-car garage a professional epoxy flooring finish backed by our lifetime warranty. Fill out this form below to take advantage of this limited time offer!
2 Car Garage floors for Just $2300
For just $2,300, give your 2-car garage a professional epoxy flooring finish backed by our lifetime warranty. Fill out this form below to take advantage of this limited time offer!
3 Car Garage Flooring for Just $2700
For just $2,700, give your 3-car garage a professional epoxy flooring finish backed by our lifetime warranty. Fill out this form below to take advantage of this limited time offer!
2 Car Garage floors for Just $2300
For just $2,300, give your 2-car garage a professional epoxy flooring finish backed by our lifetime warranty. Fill out this form below to take advantage of this limited time offer!
Get Started Now
Ready to upgrade your garage with Apex Epoxy Flooring? Fill out the form below, and let us handle the rest. Whether it’s a 2-car or 3-car garage, we’re here to deliver top-notch service.
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