Friday, January 23, 2009

Make Your World Colorful: Colored Polished Concrete

By Mikkan Drane

You can choose from a variety of ways in order to give your polished concrete floor the desired color you want it to become. These ways include in the typical color pigment to concrete mix application, dye, tinting, and chemical or acid staining option. With the right method and a choice of pattern to add in, you will be able to come up with the polished concrete design that you wish to have.

Color pigmentation coloring option is what used to be the most common way many concrete polishing experts had gotten used with. This process involves the coloring pigment material being mixed at the right proportion with the cement on the concrete or as topping on its layer. The pigment is applied to the thickness of the concrete itself. Used commonly during honing, the color pigments are lessened when necessary depending on what the concrete floor requires. It is available in powder, dissolving granule, and liquid form.

The pigmenting process works when the ultra fine pigment particles disperse as fine solids throughout the concrete mixture or matrix. From the pigmenting style, comes the dry shake feature. This is a mixture of pigment, cement and sand hand cast onto the pre hardened concretes surface. The color comes off through monolithic topping formation.

The chemical staining, more commonly known as the concrete acid staining, is lately becoming more popular than the pigmenting option. The material or component in this option includes metallic salts mixed with a slightly acidic, water based solution. The acid is responsible in opening up the dense concrete surface, which allows the metallic salts to seep into the slab and react with the hydrated lime found in concretes compounds.

Unlike your usual idea of dyes and tints, the dyes and tints for concrete polish purposes are actually more opaque and remain on the surface of the concrete more than the acid or chemical stain. That means this coloring type is easier to handle and is actually often used to correct and repair results from the chemical and acid staining process. The color of these dyes and tints gives off more color options and are more vibrant than the other coloring solutions mentioned.

The surface coating option for coloring polished concrete floors is probably the simplest method available. This process only requires the contractor to paint and apply sealer on the surface of the concrete polished floor. The design and pattern would all come down to the clients choices of colors and shades. This type of coloring option can easily give you styles and finishes similar to mottled sandstone similar to what interior designers love. The end result in coloring your concrete polish floor all depends on how you maximize the different methods available. - 16738

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