Almost everyone who asks about a coated floor has seen a bad one. A garage where the coating lifted in sheets, or a basement where it went milky and started flaking at the edges. So the real question underneath "how long does it last" is usually "how do I avoid what happened to my neighbour".
The honest range
A properly prepared and properly specified floor lasts a long time. A badly prepared one fails fast, and it fails in a way that is worse than bare concrete because now you have to grind the old system off before you can fix it.
| What it is | Realistic life |
|---|---|
| Hardware store roll on kit, acid etched | 1 to 3 years |
| Single coat epoxy, minimal prep | 3 to 5 years |
| Diamond ground, primed, flake, polyaspartic topcoat | 15 to 20 years, residential |
| Commercial or industrial system, correctly specified | 10 to 20 years under traffic |
The spread between the top and the bottom of that table is not the coating. It is the day of work underneath it.
The four things that kill a floor early
1. Preparation that was skipped
This is the cause of most failures and it is not close. Concrete has to be mechanically opened so the primer keys into it. Acid etching is faster and cheaper and it does not do the same job. If a floor is delaminating in big clean sheets that peel like a sticker, the coating never bonded in the first place.
2. Moisture coming up through the slab
Concrete on grade passes water vapour. If the slab is putting out more moisture than the system tolerates, the vapour collects under the coating and pushes it off. It shows up as bubbles, blisters, or a milky haze, usually within the first year.
The fix is a moisture test before anything is installed, and a moisture mitigating primer if the numbers call for it. It costs money. Skipping it costs the whole floor.
3. UV, if there is no UV stable topcoat
Epoxy is not UV stable. Left as the top layer with sun coming through an open garage door, it ambers and eventually chalks. It is usually cosmetic before it is structural, but it is the most visible way a floor looks old before it is old. A polyaspartic or urethane topcoat solves it.
4. Movement in the slab
Cracks move. Control joints move. If they were filled with topcoat rather than treated properly, the crack telegraphs straight back through the finish within a season or two. Colorado makes this worse than most places, because a slab can cycle through freeze and thaw several times in a single week.
What does not kill a floor
- Hot tyres. Hot tyre pickup lifts thin, poorly bonded coatings. It does not lift a primed and topcoated system.
- Jack stands and floor jacks. Point loads are fine. Dragging a loaded jack across the floor will scratch the topcoat, same as it would any finish.
- Road salt, if there is a proper topcoat on it. Salt is hard on bare concrete and on cheap coatings. A polyaspartic topcoat handles it.
- Washing it. Water and a neutral cleaner are fine. Avoid anything acidic and anything that says it strips.
How to tell what a quote is actually buying you
You cannot judge a coated floor by looking at it on the day it is finished. Every one of them looks good on day one. What separates a fifteen year floor from a three year floor is invisible by the time you see it, so ask about it before you buy:
- How are you preparing the slab. The answer you want is diamond grinding, not acid etching.
- Will you moisture test, and what do you do if it fails.
- How are you treating cracks and control joints.
- What is the topcoat, and is it UV stable.
- How many coats, and what are the cure times between them.
A contractor who is doing the work properly will have quick, specific answers to all five, because those decisions are most of their day. Vague answers on preparation are the tell.
What we do about it
Diamond grind every slab. Cut out and structurally repair cracks rather than coating over them. Moisture test before committing to a system. Prime, build, and topcoat in sequence with the cure times the manufacturer actually specifies. And tell you the cure schedule at handover so the floor is not driven on before it is ready.
None of that is exotic. It is just the part that does not photograph well.