A Seemingly Endless Amount Of Concrete Floor

Colouring Options

Concrete and colour have come a long way in the last few years. Integral colouring is no longer the only method for colouring polished concrete floors. After the introduction of integral colours to the concrete flooring market came acid stains. Acid staining brought earthly tones and variegated marbling effects to the world of concrete. More recently, developments in concrete dyes have made possible primary colours to concrete floors. These penetrating dyes have opened up a whole new spectrum of colours and tones to dull, uncoloured concrete flooring.

Concrete dyes don’t have the variegated appearance of an acid stain, but rather are monolithic and uniform in appearance. This uniformity in the hands of an artist makes creating designs, patterns, logos and stencilled images a much more regulated and controlled method to concrete design options. Concrete dyes also work well in touching up and blending acid stains. Colours can be built in layers on top of each other and also be diluted to feather out and blend designs and patterns.

When using acid stains to add colour when polishing concrete flooring, keep in mind that with more exposed aggregate, the less amount of “cream” on the surface of the slab you will have for the acid stain to react. With a decrease in cream, you will have less colouring effect with an acid stain. However, with that being said, there are many cases where this specific look is desired.

Stains are often confused with dyes. The particle size of a dye is hundreds of times smaller than a pigment in a water based stain. Because of this physical difference, solvent based dyes penetrate deeper than the mentioned water based stain. At this time, there is not a water-based stain that works long term when used directly on polished concrete floors. These water based stains most commonly use acrylic as the carrier and quickly experience fading and walk off.

Elite Crete Australia offers HYDRA-STONE™ Dye Stain to the concrete polishing and concrete overlay market. HYDRA-STONETM is a solvent based dye that comes in 20 standard colours. These colours can be further diluted to create any possible colour with the use of HYDRA-

STONE™ Reducer. The solvent carrier in HYDRA-STONE™ allows the dye to penetrate for longer than acetone based concrete dyes. Dry colour packs are also available.