Decorative Concrete Acid Stain

Integral color and color hardener are still the most common ways to tint concrete. But these days, the buzz is all about acid stain.

"It's one of the most popular things that's going, period," says Sherry White, director of corporate communications for L.M. Scofield Co. "As far as people calling us with inquiries, it's the hottest thing we have going."

Barbara Sargent, owner of Kemiko Concrete Products Inc., agrees. Acid stain gives even the blandest concrete slab a blast of unique character, she says. "Every floor comes up different. I'm not slamming integral color, but that's more monochromatic and uniform than acid stain."

Stain bonds chemically with concrete, creating crystal formations that lend color to the slab. Because the stain is the result of many individual chemical reactions, the tint is uneven — gloriously so. It can contain marbling, mottling and all kinds of variations in the base hue. It can be manipulated to duplicate the shadings of natural stone or the effects of age. What's more, it's translucent, allowing variations in the substrate to show through. Each stained floor has a look that can't be duplicated, even with another batch of the same stain.

Sargent stained the floors in her home with her company's tan stain, and she sees all kinds of delicious shades in the result: caramel, creamed coffee, buckskin suede. Her company's most popular color, cola, turns out a floor that looks like old distressed leather, she says.

Companies referenced in this article:
Kemiko Concrete Products
L.M. Scofield