Decorative Concrete

The days are long gone when concrete was a functional but little appreciated default sub flooring.  Modern decorative concrete is anything but gray. If you're thinking about that unlovely and unloved rough texture you find in untreated garage floors and car parks then you're in for a gorgeous surprise. There is now an astonishing range of effects that modern decorative concrete mixes can achieve.  Concrete is now the material of choice for architects looking to create a smooth but beautiful allergen free, energy efficient flooring. Concrete is used for counter tops, for sinks, for designer floors and entire bathrooms. Come talk to us at Jacksonville Epoxy Pros and let us open your eyes to the possibilities of new concrete installations in your home, or commercial property.

Stamped and Textured Concrete
The first point to realize is that concrete doesn't have to look like concrete at all.  Modern concrete finishes mean that it can be as smooth as marble (and virtually impossible to distinguish from it) or textured to look like an amazing range of materials.  Using stamping techniques to press a pattern into the surface, plus carefully chosen aggregates so the concrete itself has the appropriate texture, it is possible to have an amazing range of concrete surfaces.  Wood look concrete, slate style surfaces, marble, or brick are all possible looks now with decorative concrete. Jacksonville Epoxy Pros will be more than happy to run you through the hundreds of options for the modern homemaker or commercial property designer.

Patterned Concrete
As designers and architects stopped seeing concrete as the material of choice for military installations and instead have started to play with the possibilities of patterns.  Concrete, particularly in its modern form is a really flexible material, a blank canvas that can be modeled and styled in a million ways. The way that concrete hardens means that other materials can be incorporated into it as it sets, such as pebbles laid in geometric patterns, or tiles, or rock – or anything that you can think of really.

Decorative Scoring
Decorative scoring sees lines cut into the concrete, usually with an angle grinder, that either simply create patterns in their own right or else help define borders for different colored concrete or different textures.  The scored lines can be colored to make a pattern themselves or left naturally. Score lines used with polished surfaces can make a concrete floor virtually indistinguishable from tile.

Staining and Colors
Concrete can be mixed with pigment so that it is different colors as it is laid, or existing concrete can be stained to give it deep long lasting color to completely change its appearance. Concrete staining typically lasts longer than painting the surface of concrete since it seeps deep into the aggregate material and is normally treated for extra protection with a durable clear sealer.  There are a number of ways of staining concrete, including acid staining and acrylic stains but there are also new looks on the market including metallic epoxy which can be used for a marbled, two-tone look.

Talk to Jacksonville Epoxy Pros about the different ways concrete can be transformed.

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