Direct Colors has everything you need for small concrete projects like garden décor, statuary, cultured stone and more.

Create beautiful colors and artistic creations with Deco Gel gelled acid stain, concrete acid stain or concrete pigment.

Visit the customer photo gallery for inspiration and give our customer service technicians a call!

We can help you make almost any project idea a reality any time of the year! Concrete decor is also a wonderful unfinished gift for the “crafty” person in your life.

Get “Concrete Creative” with Direct Colors!

Here’s a few of our most popular colors:

“The temperature when I stained the floors was in the high 70s but humidity was 15% so even wetting the concrete I don’t think the solution stayed wet long enough for the acid to its full effect. The main color is Malayan Buff. The darker highlight is Cola I squirted on from a spray bottle. My intent was to make it looks like intermittent intrusions into the base. I also did not want it to be perpendicular to any of the walls so that is why it is at an angle.”

“Due to the low humidity, spreading the sealer with the pad is the best way. It took a day for prep and stain, a day for neutralizing and washing, and another day for more washing and first seal coat. The first seal coat used half the 5 gallon container as the concrete really soaked it in but the second coat probably did not use more than a half gallon. I found a shop vacuum extremely useful in gathering up the water when cleaning the floor. A floor squeegee ($5) came in handy for pushing the water on the floor.”

“It was our first time and we are happy with the results. We plan to do more staining next fall so that puts us in the class of satisfied DIY customers.”

Working primarily with DCI Smooth White Overlay, Rachel has created beautiful designs using acid stain, concrete dye and concrete pigment specific to each customer’s unique personality. The sky really is the limit with decorative concrete these days and in the hands of an artisan, concrete can look like wood, stone or any kind of traditional flooring and better.

DCI Concrete Overlay can be hand-troweled smooth with a magic trowel, stamped or textured. If you have a heavily stained, slightly damaged or generally unattractive concrete slab – indoors or out – you’d like to start over with, this is the product. You don’t have to be an expert to overlay a concrete floor, just a little bit handy. Give us a call for advice on your next project and we’ll provide all the technical assistance you’ll need to get the job done right yourself!

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!

If college students can make a concrete canoe float, what can you do with decorative concrete at your home or business? Need additional inspiration? Visit our photo gallery to see what other customers have accomplished with concrete pigment, acid stain and more.

Mr. Teel began by troweling down a ¼ in. coat of DCI Smooth Gray Overlay. He applied the overlay with a 12” and 18” Magic Trowel – an excellent choice for smooth finished surfaces. DCI Concrete Overlay is specially formulated to produce a robust reaction with acid stain creating rich, vibrant colors every time.

After the overlay had cured, Mr. Teel applied Malayan Buff for the basecoat and accented the floor with Avocado and Azure Blue Acid Stains. Using the techniques of pouring the Azure Blue and Avocado directly on the floor and applying the stain with the sprayer nozzle very close to the surface, he was able to create a veined effect throughout the house. Mr. Teel also applied Azure Blue Deco Gel to fashion a circular free-hand design on the floor.

The Teel’s were looking for a glossy finish but didn’t want the strong odor of a solvent-based based sealer in their home so they selected the Krystal Kote High Gloss Water Based Sealer. Mr. Teel applied the sealer with 12” Padco Floor Coater and 10” Trim Pad for the hard to reach areas. To preserve the luster and shine of his sealed indoor surfaces, Teel waxed his floors with DCI Residential Floor Wax and Polish.

Direct Colors has taken special care in formulating products that professionals and homeowners alike can apply with equal success. We take great pride in presenting the Teel’s project to our customers and hope you too will be inspired to tackle your own decorative concrete project this year!

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.

Questions? We’ve got answers. Call us at 877-255-2656 or email at info@directcolors.com

Good floor prep can’t be emphasized enough.  We had old astroturf glued to the concrete.  After several passes with a scraper, Bean-e-doo, and the use of a floor sander, the concrete was ready for stain.  This process was definitely more work and took twice as long, but would not have yielded our final result had it been skipped or abbreviated.

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.

I was going for a marble-granite look, and got it. Many thanks to the several conversations with your technician, Frank. I wanted you to see the results.”

Tina N.
Texas