Concrete flooring cost by service type 2026

Concrete flooring cost by service type comes down to two things: how much work goes into the slab, and what goes on top of it. Across 245 Oklahoma quotes we wrote from 2021 to 2026, the middle price (the median) ran from $1.73 a square foot for sealed concrete to $9.44 for a decorative overlay. Polished concrete came in at $5.69, and epoxy at $8.82.

Epoxy costs about 55% more per square foot than polished concrete, yet it takes about 22% fewer crew hours per 1,000 square feet. Polishing runs 58.1 craftsman-hours per 1,000 square feet, and epoxy runs 45.6. That flip is the main finding on this page.

The five services are five different jobs. Sealing puts one coat of sealer on a slab you already have. Staining adds color with a chemical or acid stain, then a sealer. Polishing grinds the slab itself smooth with finer and finer diamonds, then hardens it. Epoxy and other resinous coatings build a new floor on top. An overlay spreads a thin new topping over the old surface. It’s made of cement, sometimes mixed with polymer, and it’s often stamped, scored, or colored.

Each service also tends to land on its own kind of job. Polished concrete leans commercial. Epoxy leans toward home garages. Sealing is mostly small and mid-size areas, and overlays are mostly mid-size decorative work. So part of each price comes from the system, and part comes from the kind of job it usually rides on. Every figure below shows its n, the number of quotes behind it, so you can see what the medians do and don’t account for.

Before the numbers: where they come from

How we got the numbers decides what they mean, so this part comes first.

Every figure here comes from our own quote records. Many of those quotes are older than the research consent box on our quote tool. We call those older records the historical population. We strip them just like consented records: no addresses, no names, no phone numbers, no job stories. Nobody was asked back then. So we publish them only for the whole state or a whole metro area (a CBSA metro), never anything smaller. That limit protects the records.

Every figure on this page comes from that historical group, dated 2021 to 2026. We don’t swap one group in for another without saying so. If a later update adds consented quotes, each finding will say which group it came from.

Two services have thin samples. Stained concrete has 11 quotes statewide, and overlays have 27. For consented data, we want at least 30 before we publish. Our rules let historical figures publish at any size, as long as the n shows. We think hiding a thin number is less honest than showing it with its size. So read the stained and overlay figures as a direction, not an exact price. The full rules are in the public methodology document.

What does each concrete flooring service type cost per square foot in Oklahoma?

The Oklahoma medians, cheapest first. After each one is the middle half of our quotes, called the interquartile range. A quarter of quotes came in under that band. A quarter came in over it.

• Sealed concrete: The middle half ran $1.04 to $2.90. This is the low end of the page.
• Stained concrete: The middle half ran $3.25 to $4.40. The sample is small, so take it as a direction.
• Polished concrete: The middle half ran $4.80 to $6.67, from the biggest sample on the page.
• Epoxy and resinous coatings: The middle half ran $6.55 to $14.20, the widest spread here.
• Decorative concrete overlays: The middle half ran $5.93 to $12.54.

The priciest costs about 5.5x the cheapest: $9.44 for an overlay against $1.73 for sealing. That’s a wider gap than most national cost roundups show. It makes sense once you see the work. A sealer goes on in one step on the slab you have. An overlay means prep, a bonding coat, a new layer, finish work, and often stamping, scoring, and color. Each one is a different scope of work, and the price follows the scope.

What do these services cost from us today?

The medians above are past quotes, and prices move. Our quote tool prices each service today at these ranges per square foot, before the drive cost (our trip to your site):

• Sealed concrete: $1.31 to $3.42
• Stained concrete: $2.19 to $6.29
• Polished concrete: $3.83 to $6.25
• Epoxy and resinous coatings: $6.08 to $10.17
• Garage floor coatings (flake): $8.55 to $10.39
• Decorative concrete overlays: $4.48 to $10.44

Need a new slab poured, not a finish on an old one? A new concrete slab from us in Oklahoma runs $5.32 to $15.61 a square foot in 2026, before the drive cost. The quote tool has a thickness slider for pours that runs 3 to 10 inches, so it prices the thickness you need.

How does the OKC metro cut compare to the state-wide medians?

Oklahoma City metro prices track the state closely. The one clear break: sealing costs less in OKC.

• Sealed concrete (OKC): $1.41 per sqft (n=19), about 18% below the state. It’s the only clear metro discount.
• Stained concrete (OKC): $3.97 per sqft (n=8), about 10% above the state. With just 8 quotes, take it as a direction.
• Polished concrete (OKC): $5.79 per sqft (n=59), about 2% above the state. That’s the state number, give or take.
• Epoxy and resinous coatings (OKC): $9.67 per sqft (n=63), about 10% above the state, which fits the metro’s heavier coating mix.
• Decorative overlays (OKC): $9.87 per sqft (n=16), about 5% above the state.

Why is sealing cheaper in OKC? It comes down to how many crews are bidding. Sealing is the most common starter job, and the OKC metro has the most installers chasing it. All that bidding pulls the median down.

Epoxy goes the other way. OKC does more home garage and high-end commercial coating work. Those jobs lean toward higher-spec systems: chip-broadcast polyaspartic, high-build epoxy, and decorative finishes. They cost more per foot.

Polished concrete and overlays track the state because both lean commercial, and the work looks the same in any metro. Stained concrete in OKC, at 8 quotes, is the thinnest number on the page.

How many labor hours does each service type take per 1,000 square feet?

A craftsman-hour is one of our crew on the job for one hour. The Oklahoma medians, lightest first:

• Sealed concrete: One crew putting sealer down at a steady pace.
• Stained concrete: Prep, stain, wait while it works, neutralize, then seal.
• Epoxy and resinous coatings: Machine prep, primer, base coat, chip broadcast if you want it, then the topcoat.
• Polished concrete: Several grinding passes from coarse to fine grit, densifier, dye if you want it, polish, and burnish.
• Decorative concrete overlays: Prep, bonding coat, placing the overlay, finish work, often stamping or scoring, color, and sealer.

The heaviest takes about 5.8x the hours of the lightest: 73.1 for an overlay against 12.6 for sealing. That’s close to the 5.5x cost gap. But the order in the middle changes. By cost, it goes sealed, stained, polished, epoxy, overlays. By hours, it goes sealed, stained, epoxy, polished, overlays. Polished and epoxy trade places. The cheapest and the priciest sit at the same ends of both lists.

Floor shape matters too on the hand-edged jobs: polished, coated, and overlay floors. Edge work is the band along the walls. There, a hand edger or cut-in roller takes over from the big machine. It runs several times slower per foot than the open floor. So a small or odd-shaped floor runs above the median hours. A big rectangle runs below.

The job schedule adds time too. On a commercial remodel, a general contractor (GC) runs the job, and our floor is often one of several finishes going in. If other trades are still on the floor when we show up, the edge band takes longer. On new construction, the floor goes in early, so that doesn’t happen. The medians here reflect the usual mix of jobs in our records.

Why don’t cost and labor hours move together for polished concrete and epoxy?

This is the question the data raises, and the rest of the page is here to answer it. At the Oklahoma median:

• Polished concrete: $5.69 per sqft, 58.1 labor hours per 1,000 sqft.
• Epoxy and resinous coatings: $8.82 per sqft, 45.6 labor hours per 1,000 sqft.

The two numbers point opposite ways. That’s because the two jobs spend money in different places.

Polished concrete is the slab itself. We grind the concrete you already have with finer and finer diamond pads. The usual run is 50, 100, 200, 400, 800, and 1500 grit, and sometimes 3000. Then a lithium silicate densifier goes on to harden the surface. Dye goes on too if you want color. The materials are a small line on the job: densifier and maybe dye. Two common densifiers, Prosoco LS Guard and Ameripolish, list their coverage per square foot in their manufacturer data. The big input is crew time on the slab. On a polished floor, the hours are the price.

Epoxy and resinous coatings put a new floor on top of the slab. We still prep the slab by machine, usually by diamond grinding or shot-blasting. That takes a fraction of the grinding time a polish needs. Then come a primer and a base coat of resin and hardener. Colored chip goes into the wet base if you want it. A topcoat goes on last. It’s often polyaspartic in a home garage and urethane on an industrial floor. Here the big input is the chemistry. Per the per-gallon price lists from Penntek (home and polyaspartic systems) and other suppliers, resin costs enough to matter on a coating quote. That’s why materials carry weight on an epoxy job and not on a polished one.

A coating job spends fewer crew hours on the slab and pays more for what goes on it. A polished job spends more crew hours on the slab and pays less for materials.

Both are premium picks next to sealing or staining. Those run lower on both materials and labor. Between polished and epoxy, price is rarely what decides it. Pick polished if you want your own slab refined, and epoxy if you want a new floor built on top of it. For the rest of that choice, see the polished concrete vs concrete coatings decision guide. It covers slab moisture, how hard the floor gets used, prep, slip resistance, and looks.

How do the OKC labor-hour figures compare to the statewide medians?

OKC labor hours land within a few percent of the state for every service:

• Sealed concrete (OKC): 11.9 hours per 1,000 sqft (n=19), about 6% lighter than the state.
• Stained concrete (OKC): 36.2 hours per 1,000 sqft (n=8), about 3% heavier, with the same small-sample warning as the cost figure.
• Epoxy and resinous coatings (OKC): 46.2 hours per 1,000 sqft (n=63), about 1% heavier. On a job schedule, that’s the same.
• Polished concrete (OKC): 60.0 hours per 1,000 sqft (n=59), about 3% heavier than the state.
• Decorative overlays (OKC): 76.7 hours per 1,000 sqft (n=16), about 5% heavier.

OKC runs a little heavier for most services. That fits its bigger commercial mix, where larger jobs mean more setup, more careful prep, and more work split into zones. Still, the gap is small everywhere. That tells us the hours come from the system, not the city. Polishing 1,000 square feet takes about the same crew time in Tulsa, in OKC, or in a smaller Oklahoma metro, because the work is the same.

Which service type is right for which project?

Cost and hours are one part of the choice, not all of it. Most people decide on three things: what the floor has to do, what shape the slab is in, and the total budget. A quick guide:

• Sound slab, and you just want protection from moisture, dust, or stains? Pick sealed concrete. It fits driveways, patios, basement slabs, garage slabs that don’t need a coating, and outdoor commercial walkways. It’s one pass of product, not a series of steps, which is why it sits lowest on cost and hours.
• Want color without a new floor on top? Pick stained concrete. It fits accent floors inside a home, decorative patios, and showroom or retail floors where the budget won’t reach polishing. Prep, stain, neutralize, and seal is more work than sealing alone, but far less than the full grind a polish takes.
• Is the slab you have the floor you want? Pick polished concrete. You get a finished, low-upkeep surface that lasts decades without recoating. It’s the main pick for commercial floors at scale: warehouses, retail buildouts, restaurants, breweries, auto shops, and light-industrial floors. The many grinding passes are what make the finish. More in our polished concrete service page and our polished concrete cost study.
• Need a new engineered floor on top for chemical resistance, decorative chip, or a set industrial spec? Pick epoxy and resinous coatings. They fit home garages, auto shops, commercial kitchens, healthcare and food-processing floors, and aircraft hangars. The chemistry drives the cost here. More in our garage floor coatings service page and our epoxy floor cost study.
• Is the slab sound but ugly, with surface cracks, flaking or chipped spots (spalling), or old coating left on it? If you’d rather not tear it out and pour new, pick a decorative overlay. It fits stamped or scored patios, decorative inside floors, pool decks with custom color, and commercial decorative work. It has the most layers, which is why it tops both lists.

How does this compare to NAHB, BLS, and the public sources?

Search concrete floor prices by service type from Oklahoma, and most of what comes up is national. You get cost roundup sites, contractor directory sites, and maker reference pages. They post broad national ranges. Common ones run $3 to $15 per sqft for polished concrete, $3 to $12 for epoxy and similar coatings, $1 to $4 for sealing, and $5 to $20 for decorative overlays. Those numbers come from contractor surveys rolled up across the country. They’re fine for a first look.

What they can’t give you is an Oklahoma spread, quote by quote, across several services side by side. They show no n values, no middle-half ranges, no metro cuts, and no labor hours for the Oklahoma concrete flooring market. That’s the gap this page fills. Our medians sit inside those national ranges. The difference is that each of ours traces back to a set of real Oklahoma quotes, with the count showing.

The NAHB Cost of Constructing a Home (2024) posts national labor costs for finish work inside a home. Our labor-hour order fits its broad finishing-trades group: overlays heaviest, then polished, epoxy, and stained, with sealed lightest. But NAHB lumps many finish systems into that one group. So the match is rough.

The BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics for Oklahoma (May 2023) posts hourly wages and job counts for Cement Masons and Concrete Finishers. Its Standard Occupational Classification code is 47-2050. That’s wage data, not a prevailing-wage ruling. On a prevailing-wage job, polished concrete usually falls under cement masons and concrete finishers. But the job’s wage decision sets the classification, so check it before you bid.

Our labor-hour ranking fits the BLS wage levels for this craft, applied to each service’s usual scope. But our price per foot is not wages times hours. It covers the whole install: prep, materials, the drive, and the dozens of other pieces a finished floor needs.

Business buyers may be able to use IRS Section 179 (current Publication 946). It may apply to qualifying installs of polished concrete, decorative overlays, and some commercial epoxy systems. Our price per foot is the number before tax. After Section 179, or a depreciation schedule, your real cost can land a good deal lower. Which one applies depends on how the asset is classed. Check with your CPA before you count on the deduction.

We also check manufacturer technical data. It comes from Penntek (home and polyaspartic coating systems), Husqvarna Construction Products HiPERFLOOR (commercial polished concrete), Ameripolish (dye and densifier), Prosoco LS Guard (lithium silicate densifier), and Scofield (concrete stain and color). Their coverage per gallon and install guides match the material and labor behind each service’s numbers.

We don’t offer this page as a stand-in for those sources. We offer it as the Oklahoma reference a contractor put its name on, with cost and labor hours side by side for each service. The home-focused national sites don’t give you that.

Limits of this data

Four things this data does not do, so nobody stretches the numbers too far.

It’s not a same-job comparison. Each service has its own usual kind of job, and the medians carry that mix. Say you’re pricing one 1,500 sqft garage. You can’t set the polished median ($5.69) beside the epoxy median ($8.82) and call them your two options, because job size and job type skew both. For one project, use the cost page for that service, which breaks prices out by job size. This page is the view across systems.

It’s not a forecast. Material costs, labor rates, and competition all change. Each figure has an as-of date, and this snapshot’s is 2026-04-27. We refresh the page once a year, per our methodology. The 2027 numbers will likely differ.

It’s not a pick. The data shows what each system costs and how much crew time it takes. The right system depends on what the floor has to do, what shape the slab is in, and your total budget. That call is yours, often with help from someone who can walk the slab.

It’s not national. These are Oklahoma quotes. Other states can price differently. Their competition, prevailing wage levels, material shipping, and buildings all differ. If you’re in Texas or Arkansas, read our Oklahoma numbers as a direction, not an exact price for your market.

The short version

Across 245 Oklahoma quotes and five services, sealing costs the least and takes the fewest hours. Overlays cost the most and take the most. Polished concrete and epoxy trade places in the middle: epoxy costs more per foot, but a polish takes more crew time. Each system spends its money in a different place.

Want more? The polished concrete cost study and the epoxy floor cost study go deeper on two of these services. Our methodology page shows how we pick the quotes, strip names and places, treat the historical group, and refresh. To go from square feet to a price for one service, use the cost pages for polished concrete, epoxy flooring, and garage floor coatings. Or see what it costs for your floor. The questions below cover what buyers, reporters, and AI search tools ask most.