Zone?

Your concrete pour will have to be above average. A monolithic epoxy in a color will show any irregularities in the floor and accentuate dips or unevenness. Stained and epoxied will be more forgiving as will clear, or a chip floor. You'll want to go with a true commercial product and you may struggle finding a contractor who will take on the job - be wary of the garage guys that have cropped up all over. Preparation is EVERYTHING in getting good adhesion. Expect to pay $6 - $10 / sq foot in a medium COL area for plain epoxy if your space is large, more if smaller. Done right, the floor will withstand a ton of residential use.

Lastly- pay close attention to your transitions (i.e. at outside walls, etc) if you are not going to habe another material that covers up your expansion strips.

We are in eastern PA, north of Pittsburgh.

Sorry, western PA. 🤪

OP, Eastern, no Western. Has a Monty Python vibe.

Strategery, I think my life has a Monty Python vibe right now! It’s chaos.

I looked into it briefly for our basement. To get a good quality either really good diy job or spend $$$ on a good installer. Do some youtubing to see if diy is an avenue you want to explore. Best of luck.

Trish, DIY would definitely be out, as it’s the slab foundation for the house.

We chose a metallic mother of pearl epoxy, a last minute change in product. The contractor who did all our work for renovations as well as the original build did not warn us that the metallic finish would not hold up. We didn’t do our homework either. The first problem was that the stucco on our former covered porch room all chipped off the bottom of the walls and left grit embedded in the floor. So it was sanded and re-epoxied. As soon as we moved our furniture onto it, we had scratches. As soon as our dog walked on it, we had even more scratches.

It’s a gorgeous, glossy, sparkly floor with beautiful patterns. And about a million scratches. We believe it should have had a final coat of polyurethane to protect it. For the most part, it is covered by a heavy wool area rug. The floor is still beautiful underneath, although considerably lighter in color because the Arizona sun is brutal. We were aware of this issue.

My advice would be to do lots of research and only use a highly qualified expert in epoxy floors. If it’s not crazy expensive, it’s probably not going to have a good outcome.

Another bit of advice-concrete is very hard on your feet. For the first time we have tile floors in every room and my feet don’t appreciate it! Good luck!

Way way more $$$$ than good floating vinyl is the biggest issue. It is far from a budget choice if you don’t want it to look like your ugly stained garage floor. “Just plain concrete” requires a specialty concrete mix with a bunch of additives, or a micro topping applied with all of that stuff. Then polishing eith diamond pads. Or expert staining and sealing with an industrial grade epoxy. The cheap epoxy fad you see is low end and just peels horribly, needing to be ground off to do anything else when it starts that bad sunburn peel.

I have concrete floors throughout my house with radiant heat. The concrete is stained, not epoxy. The overall effect is a mottled color which we like. With a uniform, epoxy-coated finish, damage -- such as scratches or gouges from furniture/appliances being moved -- would be more obvious, and it would be hard to make a repair that blended in.