How to Work Out Epoxy Flooring Cost per Square Meter
A 220 m² floor priced line by line in pounds, from data sheet consumption to a rate per m². A 10% overage cost 12.5%, and one coat of topcoat moved the rate by 17.9%.
Price the floor, then divide by its area in m². Turn each product’s data sheet consumption into square meters per kit, round up to the whole kits you will be invoiced for, add labor, overhead and margin, and divide the total by the coated area. On the worked 220 m² job below that comes to £52.37 per m². The rate is the last line of the arithmetic, never the first, and the coating build-up moves it far more than anything else.
This page works one floor in square meters and pounds, priced by the Epoxy Flooring Cost Calculator switched to m². Every price on it is an example input, not a UK market rate. We do not publish market rates (our methodology page explains why), and the figures are only there so the arithmetic has something to work on. Every result is an output of the calculator, and a build check re-derives each one, so the page cannot drift away from the tool. If you price in Australian dollars or anything else, read £ as your currency: nothing in the method changes.
Step one: turn data sheet consumption into m² per kit
Metric data sheets rarely give coverage per kit. They give consumption: kilograms or liters of mixed product per m² at the film the system specifies. Coverage per kit is what the kit holds divided by that consumption, in the same unit. The three coverage-priced products on the worked job:
- Epoxy primer: a 10 kg kit at 0.25 kg per m² covers 40 m² per kit, at £85.00 a kit
- Pigmented base coat: a 15 kg kit at 0.5 kg per m² covers 30 m² per kit, at £120.00 a kit
- Polyaspartic topcoat: a 6 L kit at 0.2 L per m² covers 30 m² per kit, at £150.00 a kit
Two traps live in this step. If the kit is sold by weight and the consumption is given by volume, or the other way round, you need the mixed density from the same data sheet before you divide, because kilograms and liters only match for a product with a density of one. And the consumption on the sheet is for a stated film thickness: price at a heavier film and the kit covers less. The Film Thickness Calculator checks that figure, and solids by volume and what a coating really covers explains why the coverage on the tin and on the floor differ.
Step two: the worked job, 220 m², five lines
A 220 m² commercial floor taking a flake system: the primer, base coat and topcoat above, a flake broadcast priced at £4.00 per m², two coats of topcoat, and a flat £150.00 for crack repair and prep consumables. A 10% overage is applied before the round up to whole kits, which gives these lines:
- Epoxy primer, 1 coat: 6.05 kits of material, ordered as 7, at £595.00
- Pigmented base coat, 1 coat: 8.07 kits, ordered as 9, at £1,080.00
- Flake broadcast, priced per m²: £968.00
- Polyaspartic topcoat, 2 coats: 16.13 kits, ordered as 17, at £2,550.00
- Crack repair and prep consumables, flat: £150.00
Materials total £5,343.00, which is £24.29 per m². Three crew for 14 hours each is 42 crew hours at a £32.00 crew hour, so labor is £1,344.00. Overhead at 12% of the two combined adds £802.44, giving a cost to produce of £7,489.44, or £34.04 per m². A 35% target margin adds £4,032.78 and lands the quote at £11,522.22, which is £52.37 per m².
Why a 10% overage cost 12.5%
Run the same floor with no allowance at all and it consumes £4,750.00 of material: 6 kits of primer, 8 of base coat and 15 of topcoat. With the 10% overage it orders £5,343.00, which is 12.5% more, not 10%. The allowance lands before the round up, so on this floor it pushed the primer, the base coat and the topcoat each onto one more kit. That is the right number to price. It is what the supplier will invoice, and a quote built on the fraction of a kit the floor absorbs is short on every line before the job starts.
Step three: take one coat off and see what moves
Same 220 m² floor, same prices, same margin, and one change: the polyaspartic topcoat goes down once instead of twice. The topcoat falls to 9 kits and £1,350.00, materials to £4,143.00, cost to produce to £6,145.44, and the quote to £9,454.52. That is £42.98 per m², a move of 17.9% from one line of the specification.
This is why two honest quotes on the same slab can differ by nearly a fifth without either contractor being wrong: they are pricing different floors. Whether one coat is enough is a question for the data sheet and the traffic the floor will take, not for the price. The cost per square foot guide runs the other test, a floor four times the size on the same rates, and shows it barely moves the rate at all.
Price your own floor in m²
Switch the area to m², add a row per product with the coverage per kit you worked out from your data sheet, and the price off your invoice. The rate per m² and per ft² come out side by side.
Every field starts blank. The quote is built entirely from your own coverage figures, prices and rates.
Open the live calculator →Converting a rate between m² and ft²
One square meter is 10.7639 square feet, so a rate per m² divided by 10.7639 is the same rate per ft², and multiplied the other way it converts back. The worked job’s £52.37 per m² is £4.87 per ft². The calculator prints both, so you never need to do it by hand on a real quote.
That factor is the only part of a published US rate that carries over to a UK or Australian job. Converting a dollar rate per square foot into pounds per square meter keeps the arithmetic and throws away everything that made the rate: a different currency, different labor costs, different material prices, and a specification you cannot see. Price your own build-up instead.
Before the rate goes on a quote
- Say whether it is before or after VAT, or GST in Australia. The calculator adds no tax, so its rate is before tax, and a client comparing it against a quote that includes tax is comparing different numbers
- Divide by the coated area, not the room. Plinths, fixed equipment and anything else you are not coating come off first; see how to measure floor area for an epoxy job
- Price whole kits. The base coat here computes to 8.07 kits and is ordered as 9, and that gap is real money on every line
- Keep cost per m² and price per m² apart. On the worked job they are £34.04 and £52.37, and the difference is the whole profit on the quote
- Quote the job first and express it per m² afterwards. A rate quoted first prices a small, awkward floor as though it were a large open one
If you are not sure how a target margin turns into the last line of a quote, see how to price an epoxy flooring job for a real profit margin. And when a data sheet gives you consumption in a form this page does not cover, how to read a coating technical data sheet walks through where each figure lives.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the average cost of epoxy flooring per square meter in the UK?
We do not publish one. A rate per m² is the output of four things specific to a business and a job: the coating system, what your materials cost, what an hour of your crew costs, and the margin you intend to make. The worked 220 m² job on this page comes to £52.37 per m² on its example prices, and taking one coat of topcoat off the same floor brings it to £42.98 per m², with nothing else changed. A single average would hide exactly the decisions that make that difference. Our position on published figures is on the methodology page.
How do I turn a data sheet consumption figure into coverage per kit?
Divide what the kit holds by what the product consumes per m², in the same unit. A 15 kg base coat kit at 0.5 kg per m² covers 30 m² a coat; a 6 L topcoat kit at 0.2 L per m² covers 30 m². If the kit is sold by weight and the data sheet gives consumption by volume, or the other way round, you need the mixed density from the same data sheet to convert before you divide. Kilograms and liters are only interchangeable for a product with a density of exactly one.
How do I convert a price per square foot into a price per square meter?
Multiply by 10.7639, the number of square feet in one square meter, and divide by it to go the other way. The worked job here is £52.37 per m², which is £4.87 per ft². That conversion is the only part of a US rate that carries over to a UK or Australian job. The currency, the cost of labor, the material prices and the specification behind someone else’s rate do not, so a converted rate is a curiosity rather than a quote.
Why did a 10% overage add more than 10% to the materials?
Because the overage is applied before rounding up to whole kits, and on this floor it tipped three lines onto one more kit each. Without any allowance the 220 m² job consumes £4,750.00 of material; with 10% it orders £5,343.00, an increase of 12.5%. That is not an error, it is what you will actually be invoiced, and it is why the calculator rounds whole kits rather than pricing the fraction of a kit the floor absorbs.
Should a rate per square meter include VAT?
Say which it is, every time. The calculator adds no tax line, so a rate it produces is before VAT (or GST in Australia), and a client comparing it against a quote that includes tax is comparing different numbers. Add the tax as the last line of the quote, after the margin, and state on the quote whether the rate per m² is before or after it.