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Trade Playbook
Decorative concrete is the craft-margin escape from flatwork's price war — and the questions are about the upgrade: why you must master flatwork first, stamping vs polishing (very different capital and skill), the manufacturer-training reality, and how a portfolio of stamped patios and polished floors lets you charge what the basic-slab crews can't.
Where it starts
$28–40/hr
Finisher (flatwork base)
Where it tops out
$90k–250k+
Decorative concrete business owner
Ontario figures for decorative & polished concrete, from the first day on site to the top of the trade. Approximate, and worth checking against current collective agreement rates and job postings in your region.
| Stage | Pay | What is going on at this stage |
|---|---|---|
| Finisher (flatwork base) | $28–40/hr | You finish concrete well before you decorate it profitably. |
| Decorative installer | $35–50/hr | Stamping, staining, and overlay skills add to the rate. |
| Decorative concrete business owner | $90k–250k+ | Craft margins, portfolio-sold — well above flatwork. |
Two decorative concrete contractors with the same ticket can be twenty dollars an hour apart because they picked different work.
Grinding and polishing floors for retail, warehouse, and residential — significant capital (planetary grinders, dust extraction, diamonds), commercial-spec work.
Best for: Crews ready for the capital step and commercial market.
Every figure above is what decorative concrete contractors get paid. It is not what you charge once you run a decorative concrete business. Your rate has to carry the hours you are not on the tools, the truck, the tools themselves, WSIB, insurance, the quote you wrote and lost, and the holdback sitting in someone else's account for 60 days. Contractors who set their rate off their old hourly wage are the ones who work every weekend and still cannot say whether the year was profitable.
The step from paid by the hour to paid by the jobStep up into polishing when commercial demand justifies the capital, specialize into high-end residential or commercial polished floors, or run crews across decorative and flatwork. Decorative is itself the "getting out" of flatwork's price grind — once your portfolio sells the work, you compete on craft and design, not the lowest bid, with margins and a body-friendliness flatwork can't match.
Wage data, union rate sheets, and the places decorative concrete contractors talk about money openly.
The rates above are the market. The live feed is the market this week: which builders and contractors just pulled a permit or won a contract in Ontario, what they are about to need, and who to call.
Concrete and Forming Jobs in Ontario: Who Is HiringAEC Stack handles incorporation, WSIB, insurance certificates, quoting, invoicing, and chasing the money, so a decorative concrete business runs like one with an office behind it.
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