What Can You Do With Concrete Pigment?
What can you do with Concrete Pigment? You might be surprised…..
Diane with Tiles with Style sent us a few photos of her remarkable work. Even we couldn’t believe what beautiful and creative projects could be created with our concrete pigments.
Diane particularly likes our blue concrete pigment for use with mortar and grout. She writes, “it makes the design come alive. I am a huge advocate of your concrete pigment colors.
I not only use them myself in my ceramic tile installations, but I recommend them to all of my clients. I tell them the grout color can play an integral part in the overall design. They don’t have to use just one color, but two or more to create depth, or they can blend them to create a vast array of effects.”
Direct Colors Concrete Pigments can be used with most any cement-based material, including stucco, plaster and overlay. Try one of our integral color sample kits to find the right color for your summer project today!
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Amie
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Adding either 
For poured-in-place countertops after pouring and floating, broadcast the desired amount of aggregate onto the surface and trowel in. After waiting for the necessary curing period, begin polishing with a 100-grit pad to expose the aggregate and continue working the surface with up to a 3000-grit pad for the smoothest possible appearance.
A manageable sized section at a time was worked, blending the next section in as the work progressed. All 4 colors were in their own sprayer and used concurrently. First the concrete was dampened with water. Then Desert Amber was used as a base color. On top of that, Cola and English Red were applied making sure to duplicate the graining pattern like that in marble and always blending with the next section to continue the look. Sea Grass was added as a highlighter to the pattern. Leaving areas with the Desert Amber exposed is important to the look. A good amount of all the colors was used, thoroughly saturating the concrete with the stain. This ensures you get enough color down, and helps the colors flow better. It’s not important to have an exact idea of how the whole project will look in the end, but you should have a general idea of how the graining pattern should flow. It’s difficult to imagine the final version anyway, because the actual color of the stain is one color going on and turns to the final color later. 
On this project, the porch was installed when the house was built and has a slight drain angle away from the foundation. This was used to help determine which way the graining stripes should go and the overall pattern. You can run water on the concrete and watch the flow pattern to decide how to use that to your advantage. If you do this immediately before staining, you may have to squeegee off the excess water. The final look is a sheer stain color as opposed to a painted look. Any imperfections or major stains on the concrete might show through. These things can be worked into the overall design, if needed.
