What epoxy flooring costs in Melbourne.

As of 2026, installed flake epoxy systems across Melbourne are commonly quoted in the region of $60–$120 per square metre for a sound, bare residential slab. For scale: a single garage is typically around 20 m², a modern double around 36 m². The spread is real, and it is not random — it reflects preparation method, film build, topcoat chemistry and who is carrying the guarantee.

Treat those figures as orientation, not an offer. They are what we observe across the market, they move with material prices, and none of them is a price for your floor — because the biggest cost variables sit underneath the coating, not in it.

• What's on the slab now. Bare concrete grinds fast. Failing paint or an old epoxy has to be stripped off first — real machine hours, quoted on top. Most older Melbourne garages are a strip-and-grind, not a plain grind.
• Slab condition. Cracks and control joints get cut out and filled so they don't telegraph through the finish. Oil contamination has to be dealt with in preparation or the coating won't bond over it.
• Moisture. Older slabs — broadly, pre-1997, before an under-slab vapour barrier was a prescriptive requirement in Victoria — are more likely to test damp. A high reading changes the system or, honestly, rules the floor out.
• The system going down. Topcoat chemistry is the difference between parking on the floor in a few days and staying off it for the best part of a week. See epoxy vs polyaspartic for the plain-English version.
• Access and area shape. Tight courts, rear-lane garages and stairs slow a crew down. Big open rectangles are cheap metres; cut-up floors with lots of edge are not.

Every market has a floor price, and in this trade the floor price is achieved by removing things you cannot see at handover. The three standard cuts:

• Acid etch instead of diamond grinding. Etching does not mechanically open the concrete, so the coating sits on the slab instead of keying into it. It is the single most common reason garage floors peel.
• No moisture test. Sealing moisture into a slab means hydrostatic pressure pushes the film off in sheets — often inside a year.
• Thin film build. One coat where there should be three. Identical on day one, not on day two hundred.

The defence is boring: ask every installer, in writing, whether the slab is diamond-ground or etched, whether it is moisture tested, how many coats go down, and what the guarantee covers and for how long. The full failure mechanics are in why epoxy floors fail.

For the record, our answers: diamond-ground on every job, moisture tested on every job, flake broadcast to refusal under a clear topcoat, and a written guarantee against lifting handed over on completion — it transfers if you sell. The quote is fixed before we start.