The Rahway Train Station in Rahway, N.J., is power-washed on a regular basis to maintain and preserve its hues.

Refurbish, Restore, Maintain: Caring for Colored Concrete

There’s no argument that refurbishing colored concrete is less expensive and disruptive than ripping it out and replacing it.

“One advantage to a color restoration project is that superficial imperfections may be corrected during the restoration phase,” says Scott P. Thome, director of product services for L.M. Scofield Co., a full-service manufacturer of concrete materials. “Maybe by changing the sealer the project will have a longer service life.”

Restoration projects done with the proper products allow contractors to make repairs and changes that blend into the existing floor instead of standing out like a repair, says Peter Wagner, vice president of marketing and product development for AmeriPolish, which specializes in polished concrete products.

Restoration also gives property owners a second chance to maintain the floor properly if they hadn’t been doing a good job before.

Using the proper products to restore a floor is essential. “As far as going back and adding color [to a polished floor], using dyes is really the only way to do it with consistency,” Wagner says. “And before we had our penetrating agent, we couldn’t always get the penetration of color we were looking for. We would have to regrind, dye and repolish. Now we can often add color without having to redo the whole thing.”

Restoration projects can be time-sensitive and closing a business to restore a floor is very costly. That fact is what makes Newlook water-based stain so popular and well received. The stains were developed to fix common problems such as discolored, wrongly colored, blotchy or badly stained concrete, as well as to maintain colored concrete surfaces.