by Mike
(St. Louis)
Home Decorators Collection . . .
Concrete Coloring can be used to enhance both a building's exterior and interior. You need only look as far as your nearest Walmart if it has been recently renovated.
In its new super store models, Walmart has employed concrete coloring with glossy seal overlooks. Not only does the floor have a nice glossy sheen underlaid with rich double tone browns, but apparently it offers ease of maintenance. You can see employees casually and intermitently cleaning the aisles with an automated cleaning machine.
In the St. Louis Hills Corridor of St. Louis Hils, there are beautifull examples where pink toned finish concrete walkways add a cozy spendor for walkways leading to well constructed brick buildings.
In one instance, bronze metal numbers corresponding to the building address is embedded in the concrete. This offers a nice interplay with both sunlight and moon light on a delightfully tree lined street.
I have seen an example where colored concrete was used to provide splendor and elegance to the exterior of a commercial propertiy. A moderate shade of blue was staggered in a checkerboard pattern with uncolored concrete, leading to blue colored concrete steps with mirror finished chrome bannisters, sporting manicured greenery on the outer edges of the chrome bannisters. It provided an aura of absolute elegance.
Turning to the interior, I have seen absolutely beautiful apllications of concrete tinting with sealed overlays applied to basement floors. A random swirling and intermixing of black, green and grey stains provided an eye catching marble effect for a basement floor.
Also, I observed an example where a stencil was creatively applied with a darker shade of a reddish brown stain/dye applied into the non-stenciled area which was allowed to dry before removing the stencil, then an overcast with a lighter shade of redish brown was applied when the stencil was removed to give a brilliant cobblestone effect when sealed. It was absolutely astounding.
The limit to creative uses of color with concrete can be as extensive as the imagination.