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Concrete’s natural color can be altered with powder or liquid stains, dyes and colored hardeners, as well as aggregates such as ground glass and stone.
Let me start by being blunt. Almost anyone can squeegee down a couple of coats of topping. But overlays and microtoppings are handcrafted, not generic flooring you buy on a roll. How do you go from doing what anyone can do to creating your own distinctive look and giving customers exceptional projects?
I was once a much younger concretist, really impetuous and passionate. I was working for L.M. Scofield Co., and as my wife told me, I worked way too much. So she left me. To be more accurate, she left me in charge of the kids for 10 days while she and her best girlfriend toured a bit of England and Scotland.
When Shawn Halverson first tried his hand at concrete installation, he didn’t intend to make it his livelihood. He got into structural concrete in high school after meeting a contractor who was working on a house for Halverson’s parents, and at the time, he viewed the job as a temporary gig.
This luxe look is achieved by overlaying several super-thin coats of microtopping and dye, resulting in a finish with subtle depth and a sexy sheen.
Before Austin was the capital of Texas and Texas part of the United States, there was San Felipe de Austin, a settlement founded in 1823 by the “Father of Texas,” Stephen F. Austin. Located along the banks of the Brazos River about 45 miles west of Houston, the Anglo colony […]
Dan McCormick of Eagle View Custom Creations, Fort Harrison, Mont., submitted these photos of a river he carved through an acid-stained floor using two brands of water-based stain from NewLook International. He put down the river at ExplorationWorks, an interactive science and culture museum in Helena, Mont.
Concrete Decor asked a trio of art instructors from Southern Arkansas University to share their perspectives on concrete, color and texture.
Light reflects off surfaces, and what an object looks like depends upon the material’s surface characteristics. Some of the light is reflected, some is scattered and the rest is absorbed, so we see different things depending upon how much light is reflected from the surface and how much is scattered. The color depends upon what is absorbed.
The introduction of dye into the polished concrete industry has expanded the market enormously. The business is brimming with potential. However, we still face the significant hurdle of maintaining the integrity of an exposed concrete polished floor while protecting the dye in it against staining and moisture travel.
Coloring concrete isn’t just a matter of choosing pigment, sand and cement. How your concrete is finished will alter its color too.
