The joint is the weak point
Where a floor meets a wall there is a right angle, and a right angle collects everything a mop or a squeegee pushes toward it. Sealed with silicone, that joint lasts a couple of years before the bead shrinks, splits and starts holding what it was meant to exclude. An integral cove removes the geometry entirely: the resin runs up the wall in a radius of 50 to 100 millimetres, so there is no corner and nothing to seal.
How it is actually built
A cove is not a coat of resin brushed up the wall. A resin mortar is trowelled into the wall-floor junction to form the radius, allowed to cure, then the floor system is carried over it continuously and terminated at the top in a sealed edge, usually into a saw cut or under a stainless cap. That is real labour, and it is the reason a coved floor costs more per linear metre of perimeter than the field of the floor costs per square metre.
Where the money gets saved on a cheap quote
Perimeter detail is invisible in a photograph and expensive to build, which makes it the most common omission in an underpriced commercial quote. The field of the floor looks identical. The difference appears at the first inspection, or the first time the floor is properly washed down and water sits in the joint. If two commercial quotes differ significantly, the cove and the drain details are the first place to look.
Where you do not need it
A dry commercial floor, a warehouse, a retail space, a workshop, does not need coving and paying for it there is money spent on nothing. Coving belongs where the floor gets washed down: kitchens, production, wash bays, change rooms, labs and food handling. We spec it where the room is wet and leave it out where the room is not, rather than applying it as a blanket upgrade.
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