Most of what wrecks a garage floor happens before any color goes down. Polk County concrete sits on sand over limestone, so we start with the slab itself — diamond grinding, settlement cracks cut out and filled, a moisture reading — and only then lay epoxy, flake, and polyaspartic. It's one day of work, and the 25-year warranty is written down and transfers with the house.
What You're Actually Buying When You Hire Apex Epoxy Floor Coatings
01
Free Quote
One itemized price, handed to you up front. We don't invent deadlines, and nothing gets added to the invoice once the grinder's already running.
02
Diamond-Grind Prep
Every slab gets mechanically profiled. Acid etching is what the box kits tell you to do, and it's the single biggest reason those floors let go.
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.”
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 — Nobody calls us about a failed topcoat. They call about a floor that blistered, or peeled at the door line, or came up in two rectangles right where the car parks — and all three of those are bond problems. Here's what's underneath an Apex floor.
Four layers, and every one of them answers something specific about Central Florida concrete — sand and limestone below, heat and humidity above, and a slab that's been shifting in small increments since the day it was poured.
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
Aliphatic Polyaspartic Topcoat. This is the surface that takes the abuse: UV through an open door, dropped tools, brake fluid, tires still warm from the interstate. The word aliphatic is doing real work there — 'polyaspartic' on its own doesn't promise you a topcoat that holds its color.
From Free Estimate to Final Walk-Through
1
Free Estimate
We come out, measure, read the slab for moisture, and you'll have one firm installed number and real color boards in hand before we leave.
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?
Free in-home visit with real color samples, and most Lakeland garages get a firm price the same day — call (904) 595-9792 or send the form and we'll come to you.
These are our own installs, not stock photography — garages, warehouses, commercial kitchens, utility rooms. Slide the handle across any image and you're looking at the same floor, after. 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 Lakeland 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
You get the final number in writing at the free in-home estimate, before anything gets scheduled — and since there's no winter here to work around, our calendar looks the same in January as it does in July.
Serving the Greater Lakeland, SC Area
Epoxy Flooring Near Me
Professional epoxy & garage floor coatings across Lakeland and the surrounding Lakeland communities.
Upgrade Your Lakeland Garage Floor in 1 Day - Free Estimate
Book Your Trusted Lakeland 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.
Lakeland Epoxy FAQs
Answers From Our Epoxy Flooring Professionals
The questions Lakeland homeowners actually search before coating a garage floor — answered honestly, including the downsides.
Durability comes from the stack, not from any one product. Ground concrete, a 100%-solids epoxy keyed into that profile, flake broadcast to full coverage, and an aliphatic polyaspartic wear layer — each part covers a weakness in the one beneath it. Film thickness and bond strength decide the outcome, which is why two crews can quote the same material and build floors that don't behave anything alike.
Both, in that order. Epoxy is the anchor: it builds thickness, carries the pigment, and bites down into ground concrete. Polyaspartic is the armor: it cures in hours, shrugs off UV, and stays hard when a closed Lakeland garage bakes. Asking a contractor to pick one is really asking which weakness you'd rather live with. We don't make anyone take that trade.
Better at what, is the real question. As a top layer, polyaspartic wins on UV stability, cure speed, and heat tolerance — all three of which count for more here than in most of the country. As a base, 100%-solids epoxy still buys the most film build and bond per dollar. A single-product floor is a shorter workday, not a better floor.
It's a fair question and the answer isn't automatic. Kits do hold on lightly used slabs for a few years. What sinks them is the etch — an acid wash opens nothing like a diamond grinder does, so the film sits on the surface instead of keying into it, and two to five years later it starts letting go. Price the grinder rental and the lost weekend honestly first.
Only when the old coating is genuinely sound, and most of what we find isn't. A film that's already lifting or chalking will take the new floor with it when it goes. Our default is grinding the old system back to bare, solid concrete and rebuilding from a fresh profile. That's real machine time, so it's priced openly at the estimate rather than sprung on install day.
A properly built system runs ten to twenty years, and prep decides whether you land at the top of that range or the bottom. The failures people write about online — peeling at year three, chalky by year four — trace back almost every time to a thin kit product rolled over an unground slab. That's a preparation problem, not a lifespan problem. Ours carries a written, transferable 25-year warranty.
Yes, and the reason floors fail this way is worth knowing. Epoxy softens somewhere around 130 to 140 degrees, and tires coming off I-4 at highway speed run hotter than that. Soft rubber grips a soft or poorly bonded film and lifts it as it cools, leaving two rectangles where the car sits. A hard aliphatic topcoat over a diamond-ground profile is what stops it.
Straight epoxy ambers under UV — that's resin chemistry, not sloppy workmanship. Here's the part most quotes skip: an aromatic polyaspartic yellows right along with it. Only an aliphatic polyaspartic holds its color, and that's what goes on top of every floor we build. With a west-facing door standing open through a Lakeland July, that one word decides whether the floor still matches in five years.
Both happen, and both are preventable. A coating peels when it never had mechanical grip — an acid-etched slab gives it nothing to hold onto. It blisters when water vapor rises out of the concrete and gets trapped against a sealed surface. Industry summaries put roughly 80% of failures on preparation alone, so we grind to CSP 2-3 and take a moisture reading before anything goes down.
Ours mostly look boring, which is the point — same color, same flake, a little less shine where the tires sit. The place you'll see age is the door line, since that's where rain blows in and grit collects. Sweep it and it holds. A floor that's struggling at five years was compromised on day one, underneath the coating, not by the years.
Our flake system runs $2,300 on a standard 2-car and $2,700 on a 3-car, installed. Most Lakeland 2-car garages fall between $1,800 and $2,700 once everything's counted. Industry-wide, professional coatings work out to roughly $5 to $15 a square foot, and where a job sits in that spread has almost nothing to do with the garage and everything to do with the concrete.
Published national ranges are wide — roughly $1,500 to $4,000 professionally installed, and $300 to $900 for a kit off a shelf. Real quotes around Polk County cluster far tighter than that, between $1,800 and $2,700. A bid well under that band hasn't found a cheaper way to do the work; it's doing less of the work, and what gets cut is nearly always the prep.
That's 400 square feet, which lands in ordinary 2-car territory — so the $2,300 flake system is the reference point on sound concrete. Cost climbs when the slab has settlement cracking, a pitted strip at the door, or an old sealer that has to be ground off before anything new goes down. Any of that gets priced in writing before install day, not discovered during it.
Everything it takes to build the floor: moisture testing, diamond-grind prep to a CSP 2-3 profile, crack and pit repair, then 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. Whatever number you're given at the estimate is the number on the invoice — no mobilization fee, no material surcharge.
Compare what happens before any product gets opened, not the product itself. A cheap number usually leaves out the grinder, the moisture test, and the crack repair — three things you can't inspect once the floor is down and can't add afterward. Coating material is close to a commodity in this trade. Preparation is where the money goes, and it's the whole reason one floor is still tight twenty years on.
Tile, yes — the material is only part of it, and labor is where garage tile gets expensive. Grout is the other problem: it cracks, it stains, and it holds whatever runs off the car. Polished concrete prices out similarly, but polishing hands you a smoother version of the slab you already own. There's no color, no flake texture underfoot, and oil still finds its way in.
The honest list is short. A coating is only as good as the bond beneath it, so a bad install starts peeling inside a couple of years. Bare epoxy loses color under sun. And gloss plus water is slick — which is worth knowing where an afternoon storm sends a soaked car into the garage half the summer. Grinding, an aliphatic topcoat, and full flake broadcast answer all three.
Depends what your garage is now. A bare Florida slab sheds fine dust onto everything, drinks up oil permanently, and stains from whatever the tires drag in. Sealed, it sweeps or hoses down and looks the same afterward, and the room turns into usable space instead of storage. That all rests on prep, though — skip the grinder and the floor you bought becomes a floor somebody has to remove.
When water's moving up through it and nothing's been done about that — a coating caps the problem and blisters later. Same story with a slab that's still moving: settlement that hasn't finished will telegraph through any finish you put over it. We moisture-test and read the cracks before quoting, and if your concrete isn't a candidate we'll say so and you'll keep your money.
Bare gloss can be, which is exactly why we don't finish a garage that way. Vinyl chip broadcast into the wet basecoat leaves a texture you feel through a shoe sole — and the difference shows the first time you step out of a car that's been sitting through an afternoon downpour. Wash bays and steep aprons can get extra slip aggregate worked into the topcoat.
Not on the appraisal, no. Where it pays is the walk-through — a clean, finished garage reads as a house somebody looked after, and that impression carries into rooms nobody inspected closely. With new construction pouring in around Davenport and Haines City, it's one of the few places an older Lakeland home can outclass a builder-grade slab. The 25-year warranty transfers, too.
Residential garages are a single-day job, start to finish. Grinding and patching happen first thing, the pigmented basecoat goes down mid-morning with flake hand-cast into it while it's wet, and once that's scraped and vacuumed the polyaspartic goes over the top the same afternoon. Commercial and industrial slabs are a bigger scope and can run two days — you'll have that schedule up front.
You'll be walking on it about four hours after the topcoat goes down, and driving on it after twenty-four. Polyaspartic is what buys that turnaround — a straight epoxy floor cures slowly enough to keep you parked outside for most of a week. That difference rarely shows up on a quote sheet, and it's a real cost worth weighing.
Count on four coats, and a fifth when the moisture reading says the slab needs a vapor-barrier primer first. Working up from bare concrete: pigmented 100%-solids epoxy rolled edge to edge, vinyl flake hand-cast until the surface won't take any more, then clear aliphatic polyaspartic over the top. In between, the cured flake gets scraped flat and vacuumed clean.
Not really. The work happens inside your garage and polyaspartic cures across a wide temperature range, so the calendar isn't the constraint — slab condition is. On a humid morning, concrete sitting below the dew point pulls condensation onto the surface, and you can't bond a coating to a damp slab. So we read slab temperature and moisture the day we install, not the forecast a week out.
Sweep or dust-mop it, and wash it down with a mild cleaner when it looks like it needs one. No wax, no annual reseal, nothing proprietary to buy. Because the surface isn't porous, oil, brake fluid, and the fine grit that blows around a Polk County summer sit on top — a rag or a hose takes them off instead of leaving a shadow in the concrete.
Isolated damage doesn't mean redoing the floor. A gouge from a dropped jack stand gets ground back in that spot, rebuilt, and re-flaked to match. The camouflage is built into the finish — with fifteen standard chip blends scattered across the surface, a patched area disappears into the pattern. That's much harder to pull off on a single flat color.
It affects the slab, and the slab is what we coat. Under Polk County sand sits limestone that groundwater slowly dissolves, which is why settlement cracks and the occasional sinkhole are a genuine local conversation and not scare talk. No coating stops ground movement. What we do is read the cracks first — hairline shrinkage gets patched and coated, but a crack that's still opening needs a structural opinion before a new floor.
It can. Bone Valley mining reshaped a lot of ground around Bartow, Mulberry, and south Lakeland, and reclaimed land doesn't always drain or settle the way undisturbed ground does. That shows up as a slab staying damp underneath, or one corner sitting slightly low. Neither rules out a coating — both change how we prep. It's why the moisture reading comes before the price, every time.
Easier one way, harder another. Nothing here freezes and thaws the skin off a slab the way a northern winter does, so we're not chasing scaled, crumbling aprons. The trade is that our punishment never lets up: constant humidity, ground beneath the slab that's never truly dry, brutal heat inside a closed garage, and a wet car parked on the floor most summer afternoons.
Yes — Lakeland proper plus Winter Haven, Bartow, Auburndale, Mulberry, Haines City, Davenport, Lake Wales, and Polk City, along with Plant City just over the Hillsborough line. If you're somewhere on the I-4 corridor between Tampa and Orlando and don't see your town listed, call (904) 595-9792 and we'll tell you straight whether you're in range.
Customer Reviews
Apex Reviews From the Lakeland 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 Lakeland 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 Lakeland, 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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