How do you choose what you want for your stained concrete floor project? The factors to consider are:

· Cost

· Color and Reflectivity

· Cleaning

Cost Factors

Re-Crete feels that it is very important to protect your stained concrete floors with a wax finish (acrylic floor finish) after we seal your floor. The sealer protects the concrete stain and the wax protects the sealer. This will add many years to your floor. The issue right now is that glossy waxes (acrylic floor finishes) are easy to find and relativity inexpensive. Matte finish waxes are more difficult to find and more costly.

Color and Reflectivity

The biggest influence on choice is the final look you want for your decorative floor. The glossy finish will make the stained concrete colors “pop” and be more vibrant. They also make the floor more reflective, meaning the room will be lighter as it reflects all the light sources back into the room. This means that you might need less room lighting, therefore using less energy. The matte finish is a more natural stone look and seems to be trending more with darker finishes and paint colors.  This is a great look with the salvage industrial decorating style.

Cleaning Factors

A glossy stained concrete floor is easier to clean because it gives you a smoother floor, but will show wear more quickly. A matte concrete stained floor will hide more imperfections such as an uneven floor and even some scuff marks.

The choice is yours

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Coffee Bean Dye with Glossy

Coffee Bean Dye with Matte

When choosing colors for your floor, or actually any color in your room, make sure that you are looking at under the lighting in that room at different times of the day.  We have many choices for lighting today and they all make colors look different.  I recently painted my bedroom a beautiful khaki color.  Loved it during the day.  Hated it at night.  I was thinking I was going to have to repaint the room or change my accent color because the paint looked green at night and didn’t go with my teal accents.  Then it dawned on me.  It was the fluorescent light bulbs!  I try to be as energy conscience as I can, but in this one room, I had to switch back to the incandescence to make sure my beautiful khaki was khaki all the time.  IF I had been smart, I would have looked at the paint under the night lighting of the room before I put it on all of my walls.

One of my favorite websites for remodeling ideas and home design ideas is Houzz.com.  It is a resource that is fun, helpful and always up to date.

My favorite thing about it is the ability to clip photos of my favorite projects and file them by room or category.  No more tearing off pages of magazines and never looking at them again.   We recently remodeled our bathroom and I used Houzz.com almost exclusively for ideas.  It was easy to see what what I liked and then to go and show my husband what I was talking about.

This is a great little article about remodeling.  You might want to go over it before you talk to your contractor so you know exactly what to expect during your remodel.

We just redid the floors for Seagoville City Hall.  We had the old tile removed, patched the floor then micro topped the floor so it would all take the color the same.  We then dyed the floor with Chem-Coats Coffee Bean Dye and sealed the floor , added the City’s Logo and they have an amazing new floor.   See more logos in our gallery.

The sealer on your floor protects the stain and it can wear away. The way to protect that is with an acrylic floor finish. You can apply this yourself as needed, especially in high traffic areas.  See our video on how simple acrylic floor finish is to apply.