Metallic pigment
Two per cent by weight, and twenty minutes to make the pattern
Metallic pigment is mica ground fine and coated, dispersed into a clear resin at about two per cent by weight. On its own it does very little. What makes a metallic floor is not the powder, it is what is done to the resin in the twenty minutes after it is poured.
It is moved with air, with a torch and with a trowel while it is live, and when the pot life is up the pattern is finished, permanently, whether or not it is any good.
It is made once, wet, by hand
The pigment separates and drifts as the resin levels, and the depth people see in a metallic floor is that drift caught mid-movement. A torch across the surface releases trapped air and opens the cells; a blower pushes the colour into streams.
There is no undo. A metallic floor cannot be adjusted the next day, only ground off and poured again, which is why we pour a sample board for your room before we pour your room.
What it is not good at
It is a decorative floor and we do not pretend otherwise. Under a metallic pour is the same 100% solids epoxy as any other floor, so it is exactly as tough as that, but it shows scratches in the topcoat more than a flake floor does, because there is no busy pattern to hide them.
It also cannot be matched. If a section is damaged badly enough to need replacing, the repair will not look like the floor around it. On a flake or quartz floor it would.
Colour, and what a sample can tell you
Nine stock pigments, mixed in pairs more often than used alone. A sample board tells you the colour honestly and tells you very little about the pattern, because the pattern at A3 and the pattern across a 40 m² garage are not the same thing.
What we can promise is the palette and the depth. What no one can promise is where a particular vein will land.
How to tellAsk to see two finished metallic floors by the same crew. They should not look alike; the pattern is made by hand, wet, once. Two identical floors mean a printed or rolled effect, not a poured one.
What to ask
Ask to see two finished metallic floors by the same crew, not two photographs from a supplier. They should not look alike. If they do, the effect was rolled or printed, and it will not have the depth in person that it has in the picture.