Bolingbrook Epoxy Flooring has installed flake epoxy floors for 20+ years in Bolingbrook, IL, serving surrounding cities including Lemont, Warrenville, Burr Ridge, Hinsdale and Shorewood. A flake floor is a pigmented epoxy base coat broadcast with colored vinyl chips and sealed with a clear topcoat, and it is the most popular finish for garages because it looks good, hides dirt and stands up to hard use.
The chips are the part people choose, but the floor lasts because of what is underneath. Every flake floor we install starts with diamond grinding, a moisture test and crack repair, and the proposal names the base coat, the broadcast, the topcoat and the finished thickness.
Pricing is per square foot for the system we propose, with any repair, coating removal or moisture primer shown as its own line. That keeps the cost of the finish separate from the cost of fixing the slab.
How a Flake Epoxy Floor Is Built
Ground and Tested Concrete
The slab is diamond ground to an open surface profile, with dust collected at the grinder, and tested for moisture with a calcium chloride test or in-situ relative humidity probes. Cracks and spalls are repaired and ground flush. We do not acid etch, because a coating bonded to etched paste lets go under a hot tire.
Base Coat and Broadcast
A pigmented 100% solids epoxy base coat goes down in a color that matches the chip blend. While it is wet, vinyl flake is thrown by hand across the floor until the base will take no more, which is called broadcasting to refusal.
Once the base cures, loose chips are scraped and vacuumed off, leaving a fully covered, textured surface locked into the epoxy. Scraping knocks off the standing chips that would otherwise poke through the topcoat as sharp points.
Clear Topcoat
A clear polyaspartic topcoat seals the chips, sets the final texture and provides the wear surface. Polyaspartic resists ultraviolet ambering and abrasion better than epoxy, which matters in a garage with an open door and daily tire traffic.
Topcoat thickness changes the feel underfoot. A thinner topcoat leaves more chip texture for grip; a thicker one gives a smoother, easier-to-clean surface.
Choosing Your Flake Blend
Color Blends
Flake comes in blends of several colors mixed together, from grays and tans that hide road dirt to bolder mixes with black, white or color accents. We bring sample boards so you can see the blend in your own light.
Garage floors in road-salt country benefit from mid-tone blends. Very light floors show salt film and tire marks, while very dark ones show dust and dried water spots.
Chip Size
Chips range from small, fine flakes to larger chips around a quarter inch. Larger chips give a bolder, more traditional garage look and hide imperfections well; smaller chips read as a finer texture, closer to stone, and suit basements and commercial interiors.
Full Versus Partial Broadcast
A full broadcast covers the base entirely and is our standard recommendation for garages and shops. A partial broadcast scatters chips over a visible base color for a lighter look, which some homeowners like in a basement, but it shows slab flaws more and has a different wear pattern.
Where Flake Floors Work Best
Residential Garages
Garages are the classic flake floor. The texture helps with traction under snowmelt, the blend hides the salt and sand a car brings in, and the build of base, chips and topcoat gives the floor the thickness to resist hot tire pickup and dropped tools.
Basements and Laundry Rooms
In basements, a flake floor brightens a gray slab and hides the patching and unevenness common in older floors. Because basements sit below grade, the moisture test result decides whether a mitigation primer goes under the base coat.
Shops, Showrooms and Commercial Restrooms
Flake floors suit workshops, showrooms, break rooms and commercial restrooms, where they look finished and clean easily. Where a commercial floor needs more slip resistance or chemical resistance, we can move to a quartz broadcast or a heavier topcoat.
Caring for a Flake Floor
Winter Cleaning
Road salt brine dries into a white film on any floor. Squeegee slush out the door and rinse with water and a mild cleaner every few weeks during winter, so dried salt does not dull the topcoat.
Long-Term Wear
Over years, the topcoat wears in tire paths and walkways while the chips underneath stay intact. A worn topcoat can be scuff-sanded and recoated without redoing the broadcast, which keeps the floor looking new for far longer.
Warranty Coverage
We read the warranty exclusions before the job is sold. Moisture from below the slab is first on most coating warranties’ exclusion lists, which is why the moisture test happens before the chips are chosen.
Flake Floors in Bolingbrook Garages
Older Garage Slabs
Much of the village’s housing was built in the 1970s and between 1990 and 2009, so many garage slabs carry decades of oil stains, salt scaling and patched cracks. A full flake broadcast is the most forgiving finish for those floors, because the chip pattern hides repairs that a solid color would show.
Oil soaked deep into old concrete still has to come out first. We grind through stained areas and degrease where needed, since a coating laid over oil-soaked concrete loses its bond in exactly those spots.
No Vapor Retarder Assumed
Garages are exempt from the vapor retarder the model code requires under heated living space, and the village’s detached-garage handout calls for a slab on stone and wire mesh with no vapor retarder listed. That is why a flake floor in a garage gets the same moisture test as one in a basement.
Coating Season
In an unheated garage, the base coat and topcoat need a slab within the products’ temperature range and above the dew point. We schedule most unheated garages between the last spring freeze and the first fall freeze, and tell you plainly when a garage has to wait for spring.
Quoting a Flake Floor
We quote flake floors per square foot for the system we propose, not from a national per-garage average. Chip size and blend rarely change the price much; crack repair, coating removal and any moisture primer do, and those appear as separate lines.
- 20+ Years Coating Concrete
- Moisture Testing in Every Scope
- Free Written Estimates