Before & after
Six floors, six problems, one process
Every one of these starts the same way: grind the slab, fix what is broken, then coat it. Drag each divider left and right to compare.
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After
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Finishes
Systems we install
Solid color, full-broadcast flake, poured metallic and high-build commercial coatings — with line striping and non-slip aggregate wherever the floor needs it.
These are reference photographs of the floor systems and finishes we install. As jobs wrap up around Champaign-Urbana and Bloomington-Normal, real DP Flooring Services before-and-afters go up in their place.
Want to see samples in person?
(217) 417-5950Photographs of epoxy are useful for showing what prep does. They are almost useless for choosing a color. We bring the real thing to the estimate.
Prefer to type it out? Send the quote form instead or email dpflooringservicesllc@gmail.com.
How to read these
What you are actually looking at
Every comparison above shows the same thing from a different angle: a slab in the condition we typically find it, and the finish that goes over that kind of slab once it has been ground, repaired and coated. The interesting half is the left one.
Look at what the “before” images have in common. Cracking that runs the length of the bay. Spalling where the surface has flaked away, almost always worst near an overhead door where snow and road salt collect. Dark staining in the parking positions where oil has soaked in over years. Open control joints with crumbling edges. A dull, chalky, porous surface that shed concrete dust onto everything stored on it. None of those are unusual and none of them are disqualifying — but every one of them has to be dealt with before a coating goes on, and every one of them is what somebody skips when a price looks too good.
The “after” half is the easy part to sell and the least interesting part to explain. A high-gloss floor reflects light, so the building gets visibly brighter without another fixture going in. A seamless floor has nowhere for dust or spills to hide, so it mops instead of being swept and re-swept. And a sealed floor stops absorbing everything that lands on it, which is the difference between wiping up a spill and living with it.
Finishes explained
Why two floors in the same blend look different
Chip size and density change everything. The same color blend broadcast at full refusal reads as dense and granite-like; scattered lightly over a visible base color it reads as modern and sparse. A quarter-inch chip and a full-inch chip in identical colors produce substantially different floors. Neither is better — but you cannot tell them apart from a photograph, which is why we bring boards.
Base color shows through metallic. A metallic pour is semi-translucent, so the pigmented coat underneath shifts the entire result. The same metallic blend over a black base and over a pearl base are two different floors. This is part of the design, not a primer choice.
Lighting decides the rest. Epoxy is glossy, and gloss is mostly a reflection of whatever is above it. A floor under warm domestic bulbs, a floor under shop fluorescents and a floor under a row of south-facing windows will not look the same in any of the three. This is the single most common reason people are surprised by a finished floor, and it is why we ask you to look at samples flat on the ground, in the room they are going into, in the light you will actually have.
And the slab underneath still shows. Gloss exaggerates flatness. On a dead-flat modern pour a high-gloss finish looks like glass; on an older slab with gentle waves in it, the same finish will pick up those waves in raking light. Flake hides this well. Solid color and metallic do not. We will tell you at the estimate which one your concrete can carry.
One thing you will not see in any epoxy gallery, ours included: the fourth year. Every coating looks superb on handover day, which is when the photographs get taken. What separates a floor that still looks like this in a decade from one that is lifting by the next winter happened days earlier, under the coating, where a camera cannot go. That is why so much of this site is about grinding, moisture readings and crack repair rather than color charts — it is the only part of the job worth judging an installer on, and it is the only part you cannot see in a picture. Ask any installer you are considering how they prepare a slab and what they do when a moisture test comes back high — the answer tells you more than a hundred photographs of finished floors will.
Want your floor in this gallery?
Book a free on-site quote and we will show you samples of every finish above — flake blends, metallic pours and solid colors, in person rather than on a screen.