Metallic Epoxy Floors in Amarillo, TX
Metallic epoxy is clear epoxy with metallic powder stirred in, flooded over a tinted base coat, and in Amarillo the choice turns on two things: a slab that is sound and dry, and a room you can keep warm until the coat has cured. Laticrete's data sheet DS-85.7-0819 identifies the powder as "aluminum platelets coated with metal oxides." Because the gloss is smooth, the concrete beneath it shows through. Westcoat keeps its metallic system to interior floors and will not have its EC-38 coat spread below 50 degrees F. For comparison, the Amarillo airport's average January low in NOAA's 1991-2020 normals is 24.9 degrees F, taken in open air and not on any floor. So we test the slab, grind it to the profile its data sheet names, and book each coat for hours that sit inside that sheet's temperature window.
National surveys say little about metallic floors, and none of them prices one in Amarillo. On This Old House's cost page for epoxy floors, revised in March 2026, a row in the additive price table reads "Metallic epoxy floor," $5 to $12 a square foot. Bob Vila's page, last revised April 26, 2024, prints the same span under a heading that matters, "Add-ons (Materials Only)," which makes it a material cost rather than an installed one. This Old House's garage remodel guide, also revised in March 2026, sets "Custom epoxy floors with fancy patterns" at $15 to $25 a square foot. Each figure is national. As the surveys tell it, size, resin type and surface preparation move the price most, and HomeAdvisor notes that "Decorative options raise the overall price." More survey rows, each with its date, sit on our national cost table.
Resuflor Topcoat Metallic II, a Sherwin-Williams system, shows how the layers stack in its submittal package. The pigmented base coat is listed at "200 square feet at 8 mils wet/dry film," a mil being one thousandth of an inch. The metallic coat follows ("One gallon of Resuflor UVE will cover: 100 square feet at 16 mils wet"), its pigment dosed at 12 ounces for every 3 gallons of mixed resin, and "a UV light-stable satin urethane" seals the top. Westcoat's system spec for Liquid Dazzle (rev. 2/26) goes thicker. It is a 100 percent solids epoxy, so nothing evaporates and the full wet film stays as film; its EC-38 metallic coat covers about 50 square feet per gallon, pulled with a notched trowel of 1/8 inch, and the cured system measures 38 to 42 mils dry. Laticrete's dose for its own pigment is 8 fluid ounces to each mixed gallon of clear resin.
Any metallic coat mirrors the concrete under it, so preparation shapes the finished look more than the pigment does. Sherwin-Williams' Form G-1 guide (revised 02/26) assigns its metallic topcoat CSP 3 on the roughness scale that ICRI 310.2R defines with ten sample chips. We grind to that profile with diamond tooling, not acid, under vacuum dust collection, the control OSHA's silica rule (29 CFR 1926.1153) lists in its Table 1 for floor grinders, with a HEPA vacuum between passes indoors. Westcoat cautions that Liquid Dazzle "may not hide epoxy patches, rough concrete or shot blast tracks," so cracks and holes are filled before primer and we say beforehand which patches will stay visible. Moisture is measured by the test the coating's sheet specifies; for the calcium chloride test (ASTM F1869), Form G-1 allows "not more than 3 pounds of moisture per 1,000 square feet per 24 hours."
Both metallic sheets state their cure times at room temperature, while an Amarillo winter outdoors sits far below room temperature. Sherwin-Williams gives its metallic coat 24 hours at 75 degrees F and 50 percent relative humidity before light traffic, and full properties after 14 days. Westcoat times EC-38 at 72 degrees F: 45 minutes of pot life, the span a mixed batch stays workable, then 7.75 hours to foot traffic and 72 hours to wheels. Even January's normal high at the airport, 52.2 degrees F, falls short of both and is an open-air figure. Before any batch is mixed, we read three numbers on site: air temperature, slab temperature and dew point. You get the walk-on and drive-on times for your own floor on paper. Plan on keeping the room closed and heated from the first coat to the last hour of cure.
Pricing a metallic floor begins in the room itself. We measure it, test the slab, and check what covers it now; Sika Canada's epoxy guide says to "Remove all existing paint, surface sealers, curing agents, dirt, laitance and loose, friable material" before coating. Tell us what the room is for, whether a vehicle will park on it, how many hours of sun fall on the floor when the door is up, and which base and pigment colors you are considering. Our free quote is written: it names every coating product and step, gives dates and a price, marks what is included and what is excluded, and carries any moisture-mitigating primer as a separate priced item. To begin, send us the room size and some photos.
When a metallic floor suits the room
A metallic floor rewards a sound slab, an indoor room and light traffic, and it exposes every weakness in the rest. Each condition below is one you can check before anyone measures, and each rests on a limit a maker prints on its sheet or on how a smooth, clear finish behaves over concrete.
- The room is indoors and out of direct sun for most of the day; Westcoat prints "For interior use only" on its metallic system specification.
- The slab is sound, without wide cracks, crumbling patches or old repairs that you would mind seeing through a smooth, glossy surface.
- The slab passes the moisture test its data sheet names; Sherwin-Williams counts discoloration and delaminating among the harm excess moisture does under resin floors.
- Traffic is shoes, chairs and parked cars rather than dragged pallets or machinery; Tennant's care guide says to put mats down before sliding heavy loads across a coated floor.
- You want one continuous field of color with movement in it, and you can accept a pattern that cannot be repeated or matched to a photograph.
- The room can be held between 50 and 90 degrees F while the coat goes down, the range on Westcoat's EC-38 sheet, and kept warm afterward.
How the metallic pattern forms in the wet coat
The pattern forms on your floor as the coat cures, which is why no two metallic floors match. Sherwin-Williams describes it this way: "As the metallic coat cures, the pearlescent pigments disperse" into one-of-a-kind patterns across the floor. Westcoat says the proprietary additives in its EC-38 epoxy "create an evolving drift dynamic." The installer can steer that drift; Sherwin-Williams notes that "Denatured alcohol may be spritzed over the surface to cause incompatibility and create unique metallic effects." The base coat sets the tone of the whole floor. Sherwin-Williams requires a pigmented base coat "to serve as a canvas" and says "the color of the basecoat will influence the overall appearance of the floor." The room shapes the result too.
Laticrete warns that variability in job site conditions, "including but not limited to surface preparation, sunlight, humidity, dew point, temperature," may lead to "fisheyes, blistering, pinholes, wrinkling, or outgassing of air in the concrete," which it says "are not product defects." A fisheye is a small crater where the wet coat pulls back from a contaminated spot, and Sherwin-Williams names "oil, silicones, mold release agents" among the causes. For these reasons Laticrete's sheet makes "Mock-ups and field test areas" a requirement. A sample board in your base and pigment colors shows the range of the look; it cannot fix where each swirl will fall on the finished floor.
Cold nights, dew point and the metallic coat's working window
A metallic coat needs its sheet's temperature range through the pour and the cure, which an Amarillo winter does not supply outdoors. Westcoat's EC-38 sheet says "Do not apply when temperatures are below 50 degrees F or above 90 degrees F." NOAA's 1991-2020 normals for the Amarillo airport count lows at or under 32 degrees F on 26.7 January days and 26.3 December days in an average year, and the hourly normals for January 15 put the air at 29.5 degrees F at 06:00, rising to 49.7 degrees F at 15:00. Those are outdoor readings, so we take the slab's own temperature before we mix.
Sherwin-Williams explains that "both air and concrete volumes increase with increasing temperature," pushing air out of a warming slab, and that a sealing coat belongs down "when the substrate temperature is warmest and the slab temperature will be decreasing." A smooth metallic coat has no flake to hide an outgassing crater. Dry air helps: the same January normals put the dew point at 19.7 degrees F at 06:00, reaching only 21.0 degrees F at 15:00, while Sherwin-Williams asks for "staying at least 5 degrees F above the dew point prior to and throughout the application and cure." Heat with care, because Sherwin-Williams says a fuel-burning salamander or torpedo heater will "introduce moisture and carbon dioxide into the area," inviting amine blush, a waxy film that can act as "a bond breaker between the coating layers." Our Panhandle weather guide covers the cold months, dew point and wind.
Care, grit and tires: keeping a metallic floor clear
Care for a metallic floor comes down to keeping grit off the gloss and cleaning with mild products, in the makers' own words. Westcoat's Liquid Dazzle specification says interior floors "can be dust mopped daily or mopped using a neutral pH cleaner." Tennant's maintenance guide (June 2017) asks for "soft nylon brushes and white or red pads" and warns that "Caustic cleaning solutions or solvents may dull your floor finish." Grit wears gloss down, and Amarillo has plenty of it in the air. The National Weather Service office in Amarillo calls April "our windiest month" and adds "But it's windy in Amarillo all year"; on March 14, 2025 the airport sensor recorded 83 mph while blowing dust cut visibility "below 1/4 of a mile." Stonhard writes that floors last longer when "dirt, sand, and other particles will not be worn over the surface," and Laticrete says walk-off mats "inside and outside" help a floor last.
In a garage, tires bring one more risk. Euclid Chemical's bulletin CP-22 traces tire marks to "plasticizer migration," the softeners in warm rubber leaching out, and says epoxy and urethane coatings are "much more crosslinked" and "less likely to tire mark" than acrylic cure-and-seal products. Tennant says plasticizer stains in a coating "are impossible to remove" and that recoating is the only fix, and its advice is to "Place a barrier between the tires and coatings."
Metallic, flake or polyaspartic: choosing the finish
The choice on this page is the finish over a prepared slab: a smooth metallic coat, a textured flake broadcast, or metallic pigment in a faster resin. The moisture reading and the room temperature can rule an option out before looks enter into it. Each option gives what it is, what the data sheets say and who it suits.
Metallic epoxy coat
A tinted base, then clear epoxy carrying the pigment, then a clear topcoat. Westcoat's Liquid Dazzle reaches 38 to 42 mils of dry film, with "Light foot traffic" at 12 hours and "vehicle traffic in 72 hours." Its smooth surface can let patches, rough concrete and shot blast tracks show through, and Westcoat keeps it indoors. It suits shop offices, game rooms and garages with sound, dry slabs.
Flake broadcast floor
Vinyl chips are thrown into a wet base coat until no resin shows, which the trade calls broadcasting to rejection, then scraped and sealed under a clear coat. Laticrete says its chips "May be used to help hide small substrate imperfections," and Torginol says flake texture "provides anti-slip qualities." Working garages and slabs with patched cracks suit it. The layers and cure of a flake floor are on our garage floor epoxy page.
Metallic pigment in polyaspartic
Laticrete's pigments go into "any clear Epoxy or Polyaspartic resin," and Laticrete counts rapid cure among polyaspartic's primary benefits over epoxy. Concrete Decor magazine wrote in 2009 that polyaspartics "aren't self-leveling like epoxies" and that "Flaws or obvious repairs in the underlying floors will be reflected." It suits a short job window or sun through an open door, as Laticrete calls most polyaspartics UV stable; see the polyaspartic floor coating page for its cold-weather range.
Metallic Epoxy Floors FAQs
How much does metallic epoxy cost?
No survey prints a metallic floor price for Amarillo, and the national figures are thin. This Old House (revised March 2026) lists a metallic floor at $5-$12 per square foot in its additive price table, and Bob Vila's April 2024 table puts the same band under "Add-ons (Materials Only)." For scale, HomeGuide's national installed rate for epoxy flooring (February 2026) is $4 to $10 per square foot, which works out to $1,600 to $4,000 for a 400 square foot room by our arithmetic, and HomeGuide says metallic tint "costs extra." A written quote is the firm number.
Can you put a metallic floor in a garage?
Yes, on a sound, dry slab, provided the coat gets its full cure before anyone parks. Laticrete's pigment sheet lists "Residential Garages" as a use, and on Westcoat's Liquid Dazzle cars wait for "vehicle traffic in 72 hours"; on the sheets cited here, cure times lengthen as the temperature drops. Tires bring two cautions: a wet tire on a smooth floor calls for grit in the topcoat, and Tennant says recoating is the only way to clear plasticizer stains from hot tires.
Is a metallic floor slippery?
It can be once it is wet or oily, and the makers say so. Sherwin-Williams writes that "When flat and smooth surfaces like floors get wet or oily, they can become slippery," and Westcoat "highly recommends the use of a slip-resistant additive" where floors may get wet, oily or greasy. Sherwin-Williams also says "Utilizing silica, polypropylene or aluminum oxide aggregates in the topcoats can provide a relatively smooth (and cleanable) finish with a modest degree of slip-resistance." H&C calls an additive-treated coating "slip-resistant but not non-skid."
How long will a metallic floor last?
No independent source gives a lifespan in years; the makers tie it to traffic, cleaning and sunlight. Westcoat's Liquid Dazzle specification says the system "should be resealed with the appropriate Westcoat topcoat every 3 to 5 years depending upon traffic and UV exposure." Stonhard ties long life to buying "the correct floor for your space" and keeping it properly used and cleaned, and names heavy traffic, chemical attack and grit among the causes of wear.
What is the downside of metallic epoxy?
The main downside is that it shows the slab: Sherwin-Williams calls its metallic topcoat "a smooth system" and says "substrate imperfections must be corrected or they can reflect through the system." Westcoat keeps its metallic system indoors and needs 50 to 90 degrees F to apply it. The pattern is one of a kind, so the finished look can be sampled but not fixed in advance. A smooth floor can also be slippery when wet unless grit goes into the topcoat.