Concrete Staining in Downers Grove, IL

Stained concrete is not painted concrete

Paint and stain get talked about as if they were two versions of the same thing. They are opposites. Paint is a film: it sits on the surface of the slab, it is only as good as its grip on that surface, and when it lets go it does so visibly, in flakes and patches, usually starting at a doorway or wherever a wheel turns.

Stain is absorbed. The color penetrates into the concrete and becomes part of it, which is why it cannot peel and cannot chip off an edge. That is the whole argument for staining, and for a slab in decent condition it is a strong one. You are not buying a covering. You are changing what the concrete is.

The trade-off is worth knowing up front, because it is where people are occasionally disappointed. Stain is translucent: it changes the color of the concrete, it does not conceal the concrete. Old patch repairs in a different mix, saw cuts, the ghost of a wall that used to stand there and dark areas where something soaked in years ago will all still be legible through the finish, and two areas of the same pour can take color differently.

For most floors that is exactly the appeal. The variation is what makes stained concrete read like stone rather than like a product, and no two floors come out alike. Where it is not what you had in mind, a coating that covers is the better answer and we will say so. Either way we read the slab first, and where there is any doubt we stain a test area so you are deciding in front of your actual floor rather than a photograph of somebody else's.