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Polished Concrete Floors in Huntington, NY
Free quotes for polished concrete floors in Huntington, NY.
Polished concrete floors are slabs ground, honed and polished until the concrete itself carries the gloss, not a coating laid over it; in Huntington the slab decides whether that can be done: how hard its surface is, what has soaked into it and whether it was finished to be seen. The ASCC Concrete Polishing Council's glossary defines polished concrete as the act of "changing a concrete floor surface, with or without aggregate exposure, to achieve a specified level of finished gloss". The Census Bureau's 2020-2024 American Community Survey puts the Town of Huntington's median year built at 1963, so a slab as old as its house has had decades of use. A polish suits a hard, clean basement, shop or retail slab and, less often, a garage. Where oil, road salt or patching rules it out, our garage floor coating page compares the coatings.
Typical published range
$3 to $12 per sq ft for basic finishes, national (HomeGuide, Feb 2026); $5 to $15+ decorative
HomeGuide's February 2026 polished concrete survey, a national one, prints $3 to $12 per square foot for basic finishes and $5 to $15+ for decorative options. By gloss it gives $3 to $6 for soft matte, $4 to $8 for low sheen, $5 to $10 for medium gloss and $6 to $15 for high gloss. By aggregate exposure (how much sand and stone the cut reveals) it gives $3 to $8 for cream, $4 to $10 for salt and pepper and $6 to $12 for full aggregate. Projects under 1,000 square feet often carry $8 to $15+ per square foot on that page, and polishing in basements with limited access for equipment may cost 10% to 30% more. No survey publishes a Huntington, Suffolk County or Long Island price, and none of these is our price. Our epoxy flooring cost page holds the full tables.
The industry specification is ACI SPEC-310.1-20 (2020), written by Joint ACI-ASCC Committee 310, and two charts of the ASCC Concrete Polishing Council define the finish. The appearance chart (code PCAC - 11.23) sets four gloss levels by distinctness of image (DOI), how sharply the floor reflects an object, read with an image clarity meter under ASTM D5767: Level 1, flat, DOI 0 to 9; Level 2, satin, 10 to 39; Level 3, polished, 40 to 69; Level 4, highly polished, above 70. The values, the chart says, must "be measured before any post-polished surface treatments are added", so shine from a sealer is not a gloss level. The aggregate exposure chart, dated February 2024, prints Class A, cream, at 85 to 95 percent cement fines; Class B, salt and pepper, at 85 to 95 percent fine aggregate; and Class C at 80 to 90 percent full aggregate.
A slab has to be hard enough to polish. ACI 310.1-20 Section 3.1.4.1, as quoted in the Council's Position Statement #7 of August 2023, calls for "Mohs Hardness measured on slab surface is greater than 4". We visit, measure and test the slab before we send a free written quote. Cracks, holes and joints are repaired before or early in the polish, the order Metzger/McGuire's Technical Bulletin T21 gives, and we say which repairs will still show. Concrete contains crystalline silica, federal OSHA states, and Table 1 of its silica rule (29 CFR 1926.1153) gives floor grinders two controls: a water feed to the cutting surface or a dust collection system. Our grinders run with the dust collection, a filter 99% or more efficient and a HEPA-filtered vacuum between passes indoors.
A polish is cut with abrasives, so the schedule depends on the number of passes and any waits on the data sheets of the products used: a densifier, the silicate that hardens the surface, and any stain or guard. HomeGuide's February 2026 survey states that most residential concrete polishing projects take 2 to 4 days for spaces up to 2,000 square feet and that commercial spaces of 5,000 to 10,000 square feet typically require 1 to 2 weeks; that is a survey's statement, not our promise. You clear the room first. We give you the foot and vehicle traffic times in writing, from the data sheets of the products on your floor. Town of Huntington Code section 141-4 counts building alteration or repair outside 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on weekdays as a noise disturbance, so we grind inside those hours.
A written quote for concrete floor polishing starts with what you can tell us: the room's length and width, what covers the slab now (carpet, tile, paint, sealer or nothing), photographs of its cracks, patches and stains, and the gloss level and aggregate exposure you have in mind. Ask for both in writing, in the Council's chart terms. Our written contract gives the start and completion dates and the cost of labor and materials, as Suffolk County Code section 563-21 requires, and names the products, as New York's General Business Law section 771 requires. For work on one- and two-family houses, Suffolk County Code section 563-17(D) requires the home improvement license number in a contractor's advertising; ask each contractor for it.
When polishing the slab is the right job
A polish is the right job when the slab can be the finished floor: hard, sound, clean and worth looking at. The first two conditions below point toward polishing and the last two point away from it; each is tied to a survey or a trade source.
- Carpet or tile is coming up from the slab: Angi's July 2026 polished concrete page, a national one, prints $1 to $5 per square foot to remove carpet and $2 to $7 to remove tile.
- The bare floor sheds a fine powder, which CIP 1 of the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association (NRMCA) calls dusting and treats with a chemical floor hardener such as sodium silicate, a silicate the Council's glossary lists among densifiers.
- Cars park on the slab and oil has soaked in: Sherwin-Williams' article on peeling floor coatings states that grease and oil "tend to soak in and are difficult to remove".
- The surface at the garage door is flaking, which NRMCA's CIP 2 defines as scaling, a result of cycles of freezing and thawing that de-icing chemicals make worse.
Where the surface is scaled, pitted or too patched to be seen, the slab is rebuilt or coated instead. CTS Cement's data sheet for Rapid Set TRU Self-Leveling describes a topping that "can be ground and polished to a high-gloss appearance" and states that it "is not recommended in locations subject to freezing temperatures or where deicing salts will be used". Our concrete resurfacing page covers resurfacers, toppings and crack repair.
Grinding, honing and polishing: the grit sequence and the densifier
Concrete polishing is three stages of abrasive work, and the Concrete Polishing Council's glossary defines each by grit, the abrasive's grade, finer as the number rises. Grinding removes concrete with abrasives of 100 grit or lower; honing refines the surface with diamond tooling in the 100 to 400 grit range; polishing reaches the specified gloss level with diamond tooling of 800 grit or higher. A Concrete International article of September 2009 hosted by ASCC, "Specifying Polished Concrete Floors", gives a typical sequence: metal-matrix segments at 40 grit, then 80 and 150 grit, with a hardening silicate applied after the 80 or the 150 grit pass, then resin-matrix diamond pads at 100, 200, 400, 800, 1500 and 3000 grit, the last two "producing the highest sheen".
The hardening silicate is the densifier, which the glossary defines as a combination of "silicate and water-based compounds that react in the surface of the concrete to produce additional calcium silicate hydrate (CSH)". Prosoco's product data sheet for its lithium silicate densifier, Consolideck LS (copyright 2025), says most floors can be opened to traffic within one hour of treatment and states a limit: "acid concentrates and acidic foods may etch the floor and leave a residual stain". The last step can be a stain protection treatment, often called a guard: the glossary's semi-impregnating kind leaves "a protective surface film of less than 0.5 mils".
Slip resistance of polished concrete: the test and the values
Wet polished concrete exceeded the tile industry's wet friction threshold of 0.42 in the tests the ASCC Concrete Polishing Council reports in its Position Statement #2 of October 2017. The statement set the floor against a "minimum dynamic coefficient of friction of 0.42 for tiles in level indoor areas that may get wet in use" and reports: "All test results significantly exceeded the required DCOF of 0.42, even at very high gloss levels". It adds that "slip resistance is not affected by the aggregate exposure class but does vary based on the gloss level". Dynamic coefficient of friction (DCOF), in the Tile Council of North America's definition, is the force needed to keep one surface sliding over another, divided by the weight of the sliding object.
The standard is ANSI A326.3, which the Tile Council calls "a hard surface flooring material standard"; its 2021 edition sorts floors into five use categories and sets 0.42 wet DCOF, or a value the manufacturer declares, for the Interior, Wet category. The older static test, ASTM C1028, was withdrawn in 2014 with no replacement. The Tile Council also states that DCOF "does not predict the likelihood a person will or will not slip-on a given surface, and it is not synonymous with slip resistance". A sealed floor is a different surface: H&C's data sheet for its ClariShield clear sealer (7/20) states "Surfaces may be slippery when wet".
Old, soft and patched slabs: what decides whether a floor polishes
Whether an old slab polishes depends on the hardness of its surface; the trade sources cited here mention one age, at least 28 days after placement, and no maximum. ACI 310.1-20, as quoted in the Concrete Polishing Council's Position Statement #7, Polishing Weak Concrete Surfaces (August 2023), calls for a Mohs hardness above 4 on the slab surface, and the statement names a densifier as one remedy for a weak one. The 2009 Concrete International article calls a well-proportioned mixture of 3500 to 4000 psi "more than sufficient, especially when polishing commences at least 28 days after placement". The Census Bureau's 2020-2024 American Community Survey estimates that 50.8 percent of the Town of Huntington's housing units were built from 1950 to 1969 (table B25034); the table counts housing units, not slabs.
NRMCA's CIP 1 lists among the causes of a dusting floor finishing "while bleed water is on the surface" and insufficient curing, which "often results in a soft surface skin". In severe cases CIP 1 points to "wet-grinding the surface to durable substrate concrete", which may be followed by a topping course. A polish adds no opaque layer, so repairs stay part of the floor: Metzger/McGuire's data sheet for its Spal-Pro RS 88 filler (revised 7/20) says it fills joints and cracks in polished concrete floors and "will not smudge or smear during grinding/polishing".
Polish, grind and seal, or coat: the choice on this page
Three finishes start with the same grinder and end differently. The first leaves the gloss in the concrete; the other two put a film on it. What decides is what the floor meets, what is already in the slab and whether you want to look at the slab.
Mechanically polished concrete
The slab is ground, honed and polished through the grits and hardened with a densifier, and the gloss level is measured in the concrete. A Concrete Decor article of November/December 2017, listed by the Concrete Polishing Council, states: "Gloss is generated from the concrete's flat surface profile rather than created by artificial means". It suits a hard, clean basement, shop or retail slab that you want to see.
Grind and seal
The slab is ground and a film-forming sealer supplies the shine. Sherwin-Williams' surface preparation guideline (Form G-1, revised 02/26) lists a system named Resuflor Grind and Seal among its resin floors, at CSP 1, the first of the ten concrete surface profiles in ICRI Guideline 310.2R. The Council's glossary defines a film-forming coating as a surface coating with a film thickness greater than 0.05 mils. HomeGuide's February 2026 polished concrete page, a national one, prints no grind-and-seal price; for concrete sealing it prints $1 to $3 per square foot, reapplied every 2 to 5 years. It suits a floor where a renewable film is acceptable.
A resin coating
Epoxy, polyaspartic or polyurea is laid over the ground slab as a pigmented or flake-filled film. Sherwin-Williams' article on epoxy thickness gives the thinnest epoxy floor coating systems as about 11 to 25 mils, and HomeGuide's February 2026 national epoxy flooring survey prints $4 to $10 per square foot installed. A coating suits a floor where cars park, with oil, road salt and a slab that was not finished to be seen, and a food service kitchen, where New York State's 10 NYCRR 14-1.170 requires floors of food preparation areas to be "smooth, durable, and non-absorbent". Our commercial epoxy flooring page covers the resin systems for shops and kitchens.
A coating is a film that moisture can lift, so before we choose one we test the slab for moisture, by the test the coating's data sheet names; our basement floor epoxy page explains those tests. Whichever finish you choose, our quote states in writing what is and is not covered.
Questions
Polished Concrete Floors FAQs
How much do polished concrete floors cost?
Polished concrete costs $2 to $16 per square foot in the national range printed by both HomeAdvisor's June 2026 page and Angi's July 2026 page. HomeAdvisor gives $1,000 to $8,000 for a project, with most homeowners spending around $4,500. Angi's April 2026 page prints $3 to $7 per square foot for a basement, $3 to $8 for a garage and $5 to $12 for a commercial floor. No survey publishes a Huntington, Suffolk County or Long Island price, and none of these is our price.
Is polished concrete cheaper than epoxy?
Not reliably: the national survey ranges overlap. Angi's July 2026 comparison page gives polished concrete as $400 to $32,000 with an average of $4,500, and epoxy as $2,000 to $4,500 to install with an average of $2,500. Per square foot, HomeGuide's February 2026 pages print $3 to $12 for a basic polish and $4 to $10 for epoxy flooring installed. These are national figures, not Long Island prices and not ours.
How do you clean and maintain polished concrete?
Dust mop it daily and keep highly alkaline or acidic cleaners off it. The 2009 Concrete International article hosted by ASCC states: "Routine maintenance for polished floors should consist of daily dust mopping. Dirt and grime can dull a polished floor quickly by abrading the surface." It adds: "Avoid cleaners that are highly alkaline or acidic as these will quickly dull a polished floor." A Concrete Construction article listed by the Concrete Polishing Council states: "Like any finished flooring or floor covering, polished concrete requires maintenance."
Can polished concrete be stained or dyed?
Yes: the Concrete Polishing Council's glossary defines both colorants. An acid stain is a reactive "solution of one or more metal salts stabilized by acid that produces coloration in a concrete substrate"; a dye is a colorant that "penetrates into the concrete while it is in solution". For stained concrete, HomeGuide's February 2026 polished concrete page, a national one, prints $1 to $3 per square foot for dye and $3 to $5 for a single-color stain, up to $25 for complex designs.
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