Design Possibilities for Concrete Floors
It is a common picture that when one mentions concrete, you automatically get the idea of a grey slab, dull and ugly. Well, those times are gone. With the growth of concrete polishing popularity on interior designs and home renovations, grey slabs will definitely be out of the picture.
Today, sunrooms, or any other indoor rooms wont always require the use of wood, slate, granite, tile, or marble flooring. You can actually easily do that on your concrete floor on its own with just the help of stamps and stencils. Decorative finishes through stamping or stenciling easily gives you imitations of the flooring styles you have always wanted, at a lower cost.
The concrete floors can also be made to have different textures, either from concrete polished ones to a rough gravel option. Depending on what compliments your room or place the most, you can decide whether you would want a smooth finish floor with glossy or matte finish, or a textured one. You can also match colors with whatever types of texture you to choose to do to add up to its make.
Putting coloring cast or staining on the textured or polished concrete floor is also one of the ways that you can adopt for your floor. This gives you an endless design possibility that you can easily incorporate on your floor’s design. With do it yourself options, you can efficiently put your own touch of personality on the design you choose for your concrete floor.
Geometric stamped patterns on concrete floors are also a way to go in these concrete design ideas. This is actually among the most popular choices done on both large and small scale areas where a combination of geometric figures and color are installed on the concrete floor. Geometric stamping is another option with limitless design possibilities to consider.
You can also combine all of the given floor styling ways to come up with your own design that will suit your liking. If you find this to much a job, you can always turn to a contractor and ask him to do it for you. Elaborate and explain to him what you want for your concrete floor, and you’re sure to have just exactly what you want for your floor.
Color Your World: Colored Polished Concrete
There are so many ways as to how you can achieve giving your concrete polished floor the color and design you desire for it. Among the coloring options includes common colored pigment application, chemical or acid staining, dye and tints that you can apply on your concrete polished surface. Adding on the desired color a pattern of your choice will finish up the look that you want for your polished concrete floor.
The color pigmentation option used to be the most common application used popularly before. Its process includes mixing the pigment to the thickness of the concrete and its topping layer. This is often used in conjunction with the honing process except that during honing, the pigment quantity needs to be lesser than when it is used on normal mixing. Pigmented colors are available in powder, liquid and granule form.
Color pigmentation works when these ultra fine pigment particles which are fine solids, disperse throughout the matrix of the concrete. It is featured in the dry shake feature and can be applied as a cement and sand hand cast onto the pre-hardened concrete surface. The process where the color comes off is through a 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.
Painting or surface coating the concrete polished floor is probably the simplest concrete coloring method offered for the process. In this option, the contractor is only required to paint over the concrete slab’s surface after it had been sealed with a sealer completely. The output of your concrete polished floor will all come down to how well you can maximize the different methods given as suggestions.
Concrete Polishing and Its Many Benefits
We all dream of having a presentable home that has the best looking design ever without the costing too much. The answer to this home improvement trouble is concrete polishing. Having been chosen for both industrial and private establishments, it is easy to imagine how well this type of floor is appreciated and adored.
The mere fact that even expensive business places and establishments would rather choose having polished concrete floor against any other type of floor easily relays an idea that there must be an advantage to this kind of floor for it to be treated so special. But mostly the basic reason for this option is its being cost effective, and easy to maintain. Whats best about this concrete polished floor type is its efficiency to any kind of surface.
Using the right kind of floor grinding tool, you can manage the degree of gloss you prefer for any type of concrete surface. Being the most innovative flooring in the market today, concrete polished floor had become quite popular because of its many benefits. This includes the low to no maintenance requirement, and its long lasting durability. It also eliminates fork truck tire marks and dusting.
A concrete polished floor is of course fire resistant unlike hard wood flooring. Its finish can shine to a glossy glass like feature that appears as if its wet. This shiny feature brings out the concretes natural aesthetic beauty without the need to use any topical coating on it.
Concrete polishing is offered in any establishment or facility, may it be a warehouse, manufacturing site, automotive shop, showroom, restaurant, garage or home interiors. This floor type technique gives any floor the best look that it can get, making choosing to have a concrete polished floor your wisest decision so far.
Concrete Polishing Options
Concrete polishing is probably the most favorable type of flooring style known to man lately. Its stylish simplicity yet cost effective features makes it an alternative against the usual hard wood floor, carpeted levels, and tiled options. With the selection of concrete polishing, you can actually turn an old concrete foundation into an unblemished, elegant, newly furnished, presentable floor meant not only for commercial places, but for private houses as well.
Concrete polishing is known as the process of grinding concrete foundations creating an effect almost identical to that of a tiled floor. Except the end results of concrete grinding gives off a smoother and shinier feel to it that can also be applied on pool decks, patios, and wherever you wish for it. The best part in it is its promise of easy maintenance.
One other option that you could do with a concrete polished floor is to add on some concrete acid stain on it. This where you get to scrub on an acid stain color of your choice to the floor, giving it the effect and pattern that you wish depending on how you applied the concrete acid stain over it. The end result would enhance the design of your floor immediately giving it that unique look you will definitely love.
After getting that shiny effect on your concrete floor that you wanted, the next important step is to seal that beauty in. This is done by adding a sealant on it, which is often a choice of Epoxy coating. The sealant guarantees protection and durability, preparing your concrete polished floor for heavy duty purposes meant to last a long time.
Maintaining the concrete polished floor is very easy. A simple damp mopping trick, without the hassles of messy wax applications would be enough to keep the polished concrete floor looking brand new all the time.
Repairing the concrete polished floor should not be so much of a burden. Instead of thinking about removing and rebuilding a huge part of the damaged floor, all you need to do is resurface that part that was damaged. This process is a definite time and cost saver, which makes having a polished concrete floor a plus instead of the other floor style options.
The work load that will be spent in resurfacing a damaged concrete polished floor depends on how much damage there is. But other than that, everything else should just go smoothly. When you’re done with resurfacing it, you will once again have a concrete polished floor looking good as new again.