Sometimes polished concrete is a little too…concrete. That is the varied porosity and sandy parts that happen when a hand-made floor is flattened and polished by precision machinery can be a little too organic for some spaces.

On the other hand, straight-up metallic epoxy can be too plastic-y. One could (maybe rightly) criticize those floors for looking too much like a bowling ball.

For this car showroom/garage, we honed the concrete and then put a bit of silver metallic colorant in a hybrid acrylic/urethane topcoat. Not enough to cover the concrete completely - just enough to give some sparkle, cover, and pop. I suspect guests (folks that didn’t witness the iteration to this finish) will not even realize it has a metallic colorant - they will just know they feel great about this space for some reason. I’d argue that subconscious response is the whole point of good design.