Polished concrete cost in Dallas-Fort Worth

Polishing removes material. How much you remove decides what the floor looks like and how much labor it took. A cream polish stays in the top paste layer, reads smooth and uniform, and is the least aggressive and least expensive at $3.50 to $6.00 per square foot. Salt and pepper cuts just below the cream to expose fine sand aggregate, giving a speckled surface, at $3.50 to $9.00. A rock cut goes deep enough to expose full stone across the floor, is the most dramatic finish available, and is the most labor-intensive at $9.50 to $12.00.

This is the part the online cost calculators leave out. Whether a rock cut is even achievable depends on how the slab was poured, how the aggregate settled, and how thick the cream layer is. A slab poured with a wet mix and heavily troweled can have an inch of paste on top with the stone sitting well below it. Chasing a full aggregate exposure on that slab means grinding into structural depth, and the answer is to specify a different finish rather than damage the floor. We check before we quote, which is why a real number needs eyes on the slab.

Mobilization is largely fixed. Getting grinders, a dust extraction system, resin diamonds, densifier and a crew on site costs about the same for 600 square feet as for 6,000. That cost is spread across the floor, so a small residential job carries a materially higher per-foot rate than a large commercial slab. This is the opposite of how most homeowners assume pricing works, and it is why a warehouse floor can be quoted at a fraction of a living room rate.

Removing existing flooring, glue, thinset or carpet tack adds $1 to $3 per square foot and is pure labor. Joint filling and crack chasing are quoted separately because the linear footage varies enormously. Dye adds $1 to $2 per square foot. Stepping from a satin finish to a high gloss adds $0.40 to $3.00 depending on how many additional grit passes it takes. We add up to $3.00 per square foot in add-ons on the quote line by line rather than folding them invisibly into the base rate.

A polished floor is not a coating. Progressively finer resin diamonds close the surface mechanically, then a chemical densifier hardens it from within by reacting with the free lime in the concrete. There is no film sitting on top, so there is nothing to peel, blister, chip or hot tire lift. Maintenance is a dust mop and a neutral pH cleaner. In a retail space or a warehouse, that means no recoat cycle, no shutdown every few years, and no re-quoting the same floor in 2033.