[ Page 3 of 9 ]

Advertising supplement provided by

Proven materials, new applications

It may be beneath your feet and you don’t even know it. That’s because concrete is taking on a whole new look. This is not your father’s concrete. It’s become a chameleon, changing colors and textures to serve diverse applications. In a restaurant it may be formed to look like rich, dark hardwood floors; in hotels it make take the form of sleek marble tiles, but all the time providing durability for even the highest foot traffic areas.

Long used as flooring in warmer, southern climates, concrete’s durability and versatility is driving the material north, particularly the Northeast, to diverse commercial and residential projects. “Concrete has been used in California since 1915 as a flooring material and was used in all the homes of the major movie stars throughout the building boom in the first half of the 20th century,” says Sherry White, Scofield Director of Corporate Communications, Los Angeles, Calif. “It’s also been essential in retail design, especially large stores that elect to color and finish the actual structural slab, which saves considerable time and money.

Stained concrete floor. Courtesy L. M. Scofield. Fantastic effects can be created when various methods of coloring concrete are combined. Courtesy L. M. Scofield.

It provides exceptional durability to the hundreds of thousands of people who walk across the floors every year.” Having the concrete colored throughout ensures color consistency if ever a chip or gash should occur.

In a recent study that examined flooring’s initial costs and life cycle costs, colored concrete flooring came in at $5 to $8 per square foot, as compared to slate at $35 to $50 per square foot and marble at $20 to $60 per square foot.

With a considerable wide range of colors already available, concrete color can be custom-blended to match specific client’s needs, adding to its versatility. In addition, new grinding and polishing techniques help to bring out rich colors of integrally colored concrete. Grinding and polishing darkly colored concrete can result in a surface resembling polished stone. Reds tend to appear as burgundy slate and black looks like granite.

In addition to design benefits, concrete has several environmental pluses. White adds that the fact that there is no out-gassing and nothing carcinogenic within the material makes it appealing to architects concerned with indoor air quality and sustainable construction issues. Concrete advocates are also noting that when you cover concrete with other materials such as carpet, you’re unnecessarily consuming resources and energy. Using concrete eliminates that waste.