Decorative & Metallic Epoxy in Spokane Valley, WA
Three finishes get sold under the word decorative, they cost wildly different amounts, and only one of them is genuinely hard to live with. Rather than sell you the most expensive option, this page lays out flake, quartz and poured metallic side by side — what each actually looks like day to day, what each costs in Spokane Valley, and which rooms each one belongs in.
The Three Options, Plainly
Flake, also called chip broadcast. Colored vinyl chips are thrown into the wet base coat until the surface will not take more, then the excess is scraped off and the whole thing is sealed under clear. You get a speckled, slightly textured floor in whatever blend you pick. It is the workhorse, the cheapest of the three decorative options, and the one we install most.
Quartz. Same idea, but the broadcast is colored quartz sand rather than vinyl. Heavier, more textured, more expensive, and much better underfoot when wet. It is why you see it in locker rooms and commercial restrooms.
Poured metallic. Reflective pigment suspended in clear resin, poured and then moved with squeegees and air while liquid. The result looks like stone or poured metal with real depth. It is a hand-made surface, and no two are alike.
How They Behave After a Spokane Winter
This is the part showroom photos cannot tell you, and in this climate it decides most projects.
From November onward, anything with wheels brings in sand, magnesium chloride residue and meltwater. A flake floor absorbs that visually — the pattern is already busy, so a week of tracked grit does not read as a dirty floor. A metallic floor is a smooth reflective plane, and every footprint and water spot announces itself until you wipe it.
Traction follows the same logic. Flake and quartz have texture built in. Metallic is smooth by nature, so it needs polymer grit blended into the clear anywhere water arrives on shoes or tires. We add it as standard and it barely dulls the shine.
None of this makes metallic a bad product. It makes it a bad product for an entry, a mudroom or a working garage, and an excellent one for a finished basement, a studio or a showroom where the floor stays dry.
Matching the Finish to the Room
Working garage. Flake. Grip, camouflage, and patchability all matter more than drama here.
Finished basement or home gym. Flake or solid with satin clear. If a lifting platform is going in, tell us where so we can build extra thickness in that footprint.
Showroom, salon, tasting room, studio. Metallic. The floor is part of the product and it stays dry.
Restroom, locker room, wash bay. Quartz, for the traction and the ease of cleaning.
A slab with a history. If a floor has been patched a dozen times, metallic hides all of it while solid color frames every repair. This is the one case where the expensive option is also the practical one.
Picking a Color You Will Not Regret
For flake, the mistake is choosing from a two-inch sample. Blends read much busier at two inches than they do across a whole room, so people pick something lively and end up with a floor that feels loud. Look at boards on the floor, standing up, from six feet away.
For metallic, the base coat underneath does half the work. The same pigment over charcoal, over grey and over pearl produces three completely different floors, and photographs almost never say which base was used.
Lighting decides the rest. A reflective floor takes on the color temperature above it. A warm copper metallic that looks rich under residential bulbs can go green and harsh under 5000K shop lights. We ask what fixtures are going in before anything is ordered.
What Each One Costs Here
Against a solid color baseline of roughly $4 to $6 per square foot installed in Spokane Valley:
Flake adds about $0.50 to $1.00 per square foot.
Quartz adds roughly $1.50 to $3.00, since it is a heavier broadcast and usually a thicker build.
Metallic runs $7 to $12 per square foot all in. Nationally the same work is quoted at $8 to $15.
Two line items apply to all three. Removing an existing coating or adhesive adds $1.50 to $3.50 per square foot, and moisture mitigation adds $1.00 to $1.75 where the slab test calls for it. Neither is optional if the conditions are there, and both should appear as their own lines on any honest quote.
The Repair Question Nobody Asks Until Later
Worth thinking about before you choose rather than after something heavy gets dropped.
Flake is the most forgiving surface we install. A damaged patch gets ground out, re-broadcast and re-sealed, and the busy pattern hides the transition well enough that most people cannot find it afterward.
Quartz repairs similarly, though matching an aged color takes more care.
Metallic does not spot-repair. The veining came from one continuous wet pour, and any patch interrupts it visibly. Real damage means recoating the section or the whole room. If the space is one where you can imagine a jack stand, a barbell or a toolbox hitting the floor, that fact should weigh more than the photos do.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which decorative finish hides dirt the best?
Full flake, by a wide margin. The speckled pattern breaks up your eye so grit, dust and tire residue do not read as dirt until you actually clean. A dark solid color is the worst at it and a mirror-finish metallic is close behind, which matters in a climate that tracks sand indoors five months a year.
Is flake or metallic more durable?
They wear about the same, because the clear topcoat is doing the work in both. The difference is repairability. A damaged flake floor can be patched and blended almost invisibly; a metallic pour cannot, since the pattern was created wet and in one pass.
How much more does a decorative floor cost than plain color?
Flake adds roughly $0.50 to $1.00 per square foot over solid color. Quartz lands a little above that. Metallic is the real jump, at $7 to $12 per square foot installed, because you are paying for skilled hand work inside a short working window rather than for materials.
Can I see samples before deciding?
We bring physical boards to every estimate and we ask you to look at them in the actual room. Flake blends and metallic pigments both shift character under different light, and a north-facing Spokane Valley basement in February is a very different environment from a phone screen at the kitchen table.
Deciding where it goes? See basement floor epoxy in Spokane Valley or garage floor epoxy for the two rooms this comes up in most.