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February/March 2010 Vol. 10 No. 2
Feature
Just Dye Itby Chris Mayo
A polished fl oor colored with Deco-Pour dyes at Microsoft Commons in Redmond, Wash. Dyes colors are Ocean Blue, Irish Moss and a custom charcoal gray. Coloring concrete is nothing new, according to Mike Miller, decorative concrete installer and founder of The Concretist, of Benicia, Calif. "Contractors have been using stains and integral color with concrete probably since the early 1900s," he says. Dyes are a different story - comparatively new to the market and growing in popularity. Dyes took off in the ‘90s and demand for them has been increasing ever since. Why? If stains and integral color were good enough for all those years, what's so special about dyes? Reaction vs. penetration To put it very simply, dyes penetrate the deepest, while stains react or bond. Dye particles are smaller than colorant particles in either acid stains or water-based stains, so they can get deeper into a concrete surface. Gary Jones, creative director for Smart Surface Technology Inc., compares dyes to acid stains. Acid stains are developed with heavy metal salts in an acidic solution, he says. They depend upon a chemical reaction with the calcium hydroxide in cement to create color, and they are sealed to protect the color after the reactive solution has been neutralized and rinsed...
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