When you think of concrete, you think boring. Ok, maybe you think sneaking in on a job site to write your name on a fresh pour, but most people think of the boring gray color it normally embodies. What if we told you that OKCrete can offer you colored concrete to compliment your home, business, or anything your heart desires?
Well, we can. You can now have a lovely dark redwood shade, marigold, peach, green, and even more options to choose from. Now, you can have a sturdy concrete structure plus the ability to choose a color with the integral color options from OKCrete.
Let’s talk about what you can customize and how we can help bring life to your Oklahoma City, Tulsa, or a home in the surrounding area.
Brighten Up Your Home
With integral color, you now have a new opportunity to further optimize the look of your home or business with your own customized color concrete. We can help you give your garden a beautiful color and pattern to enhance its visual appearance, accent your driveway with the color of your garage door for seamless continuity outside your home, or install an integral color deck around your pool to enhance the look.
Needless to say, your design options are endless now that you can choose the color of your concrete with OKCrete. You’re no longer stuck with a gray concrete color for everything around your home or workplace.
We have a chart listed on our website that includes the colors we can offer. Once you’ve picked the right one, we’ll mix it into your concrete to compliment everything around your property and you’ll consider it a job well done.
What Does it Involve?
This type of decorative concrete involves adding color directly to the mix during the mixing process, as opposed to applying color after it is already poured and cured. This results in a consistent and uniform color throughout the entire thickness of the concrete slab. Here are some things you should know:
- Color Consistency: One of the primary advantages is that the color is consistent throughout the entire depth of the concrete. This means that even if it is chipped, cracked, or worn down over time, the underlying color remains the same.
- Mixing: The color is typically added to the mix at the ready-mix plant or on-site using pigments or color admixtures. These pigments are specifically designed to be mixed with concrete and are resistant to fading, ensuring the color remains vibrant over time.
- Durability: This is highly durable and resistant to fading, chipping, and wear. This is because the color is embedded throughout the entire structure, rather than being a surface treatment that can wear off.
- Texture & Finish: This can be combined with various finishing techniques such as stamping, stenciling, and polishing to achieve different textures and looks. This allows for a wide range of design possibilities.
- Maintenance: While it’s durable, proper maintenance is still important to ensure its longevity. Regular cleaning and occasional resealing can help protect the color and overall appearance.
- Professional Installation: It’s recommended to have this installed by experienced concrete contractors who are familiar with the mixing process, proper installation techniques, and finishing methods to achieve the desired results.
How Does Coloring Concrete Work?
There are actually four ways to color concrete. These ways include staining, color hardeners, dyes, and integral pigments. Each produces different looks and outcomes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages, so, let’s dive in.
Staining Concrete Mix
Stained concrete looks great and offers many design options. Staining can be applied to recently-installed concrete or pre-existing concrete.
However, OKCrete doesn’t offer staining services due to the fact that it fades over time depending on exposure to traffic, weather, and abuse. Integral concrete colors and color hardeners last much longer and provide better value for our customers.
Color Hardeners
Color hardeners are only added on the surface like stains, but unlike staining, are added to the concrete while it’s still wet. This offers great color customization options like staining, including two-tone designs, but they actually “harden” the concrete surface, adding durability and abrasion resistance.
Dyes
Dyes can be added to the wet concrete mix and allowed to soak in. This method produces deep, rich colors but is not as durable as other methods. Dyes offer more vibrant color options but are not UV-safe, so they are typically used for indoor applications where accomplishing a very specific color design is required.
It’s important to note that even indoor applications like concrete floors are exposed to UV rays, which is why we don’t recommend coloring concrete with a dye pigment.
Integral Coloring
Integral color concrete is the best method of coloring because the entire concrete mix becomes a single color before its poured. The color is evenly distributed throughout the concrete, giving the most uniform design and lasting as long as the concrete does. Even if it gets damaged or chipped, the color won’t change.
The only downside to integral color is that it cannot produce colors as vividly as other application techniques. However, integral coloring can be combined with color hardeners to develop an even more unique design.
What is The Process of Integral Concrete Coloring from OKCrete?
This is where pigments are added to the mix before placement. This means that the color goes all the way through the concrete and cannot be worn or chipped away. This has been around for over 100 years, and it’s what we found works best.
It ensures that the shade of your integral color concrete will not fade. This is mainly because the options for colors are primarily earth tones – browns, tans, grays, and subtle reds – but also because of the way it is colored. So, this means that your color concrete will age much better than the other ways of staining, dyeing, and color hardening.
Aside from earth tones, we can also achieve beautiful light blues and greens. So, if you want a brighter color, we can use integral colors as a base and add hardeners, stains, or dyes to the surface.
How Does the Color Selection & Integration Work?
At OKCrete, we will do our best to create a shade of concrete that will best accent your home, backyard, fence, or anything else. Here’s how it works:
Browse through our selection of concrete colors in the section at the top of this page.
Decide on a concrete color and book your appointment with us. We will make every effort to get the color of your concrete as close to the color you’ve chosen.
We will color and pour your concrete at the appointed time and place, and complete the project to your satisfaction.
What You Need to Know About Color Matching
While we are the #1 concrete contractor in Tulsa, Oklahoma, we do our best to complete the color matching of your dreams. However, there are no color guarantees.
Each mix of cement and batch of colors has its own chemical reaction. So, we cannot perfectly match colors as a paint store can. However, the colored cement will still look like what you want. A red will look red, and a tan will look tan. Tomato, tomahto.
About OKCrete
At OKCrete, we provide high-quality concrete placement for both residential and commercial projects. We have set high standards for concrete placement and provide all our clients with the right guidance and solutions that are designed to last.
With us, you can protect your driveways, patios, and buildings from structural damages with our professional concrete services. No project is too big or small for us.
If your home or office in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, or surrounding areas needs a project done, trust us – the expert concrete contractor – to complete your job effectively and on time.
Want a Visual Explanation?
If you’re more of a visual person, check out this TikTok video about colored concrete!
