Color selection for concrete projects is a challenging process for most homeowners.  How do you find a color that’s in harmony with everything around it which connects it all in a tasteful, attractive, and appealing way?  Here are a few tips to help you navigate your way through this fun and sometimes overwhelming process.

Exterior Concrete Surfaces

• Start thinking about neighborhoods or other homes whose exteriors and landscaping features you find aesthetically pleasing.  Look at the details and determine the specific characteristics you like, i.e. paint colors and how they coordinate with patio, sidewalk, or driveway colors and textures, all of the landscaping features and how that ties into the overall look of the home’s exterior.
• Look for the color detail in your home’s exterior permanent features (exterior stone, retaining walls, landscaping rock and boulders).  Oftentimes, there are flecks of color within those features that are excellent concrete color options.
• Neutral colors, such as earth tones, grays, beiges, and taupes, are always a good choice because they go with anything and compliment exterior features.  Adding several variations of a neutral color adds richness.  Remember, you want colors to enhance, not overpower, your home’s exterior.
• Dark colors absorb heat and will deteriorate quicker, thus requiring more touch-up and a sooner recolor/reseal.  Light colors reflect heat and light and will last longer.  By the way, this applies to your home’s paint colors, too.
• If your heart is set on a dark or a brighter splash of color, consider a light stain/color on the majority of the patio, sidewalk or driveway surface and then add a dark or fun accent color in a perimeter border that ties into your home’s stone, brick, or hardscape features.
• Use vivid colors at elevation changes, such as steps or patio and driveway borders.  This is a great decorative way to identify a change in the concrete’s elevation while minimizing potential trip and fall hazards.
• When updating a color, you don’t have to go “big” to get the look you want.  Oftentimes, updated colors are simply a different tone or slight variation in lightness/darkness to a formerly popular color.

Interior Concrete

You have a lot more flexibility inside your home because your decorating choices and colors are confined to a room or several.  There really is no limit to a style or look you’re trying to achieve.  First things first … define the look.

• Do you want understated and elegant?  Stay in the white, off-white, and gray family of concrete stains … even consider a solid color stain.
• The industrial/monochrome style has been popular for several years.  The clean lines of this style can be enhanced and updated by a concrete floor that has been stained a solid neutral color with one or two additional concrete stains applied to give it a variegated look.  Either a matte or high gloss sealer would be great choices for the finish coat.
• Throwing caution to the wind and desiring a wild and unpredictable look?  Consider metallic concrete finishes – nothing says unconventional like a metallic floor finish in whatever vivid color suits your fancy.

Don’t worry … if you’re not feeling up to the task of color selection, we’re here to help!  Part of our job as your decorative concrete contractor is to assist you in picking the right colors for your concrete project.