Concrete Staining in Lemont, IL

Day to day on a floor with color in it

What you are standing on is the structural floor, which settles a set of questions before they are asked. Shelving, display fixtures, counters and equipment can be stood anywhere and moved whenever the layout changes, because there is no covering underneath them to indent, split or have to be made good afterwards.

Maintenance is a mop over a closed surface. The sealer is the only layer above the color, so there is nothing to reseat, nothing to keep flat and no jointing to work at, and dirt comes up rather than being pushed into open concrete.

Nothing has to be ordered, delivered, cut or acclimated either, since no material is being brought in to lay over what you own. What you are buying is preparation, color and sealer, and there is no offcut waste at the end of it and nothing taken to a skip.

The variation is what makes it wear gracefully. A floor that was never uniform does not develop worn patches, because there is no even field for a patch to show against, and when the surface does eventually need attention the answer is a fresh sealer over color that has not moved.

Color first, then how much sheen you want

The color is the first decision and it behaves less like choosing a product than most people expect. The same color goes down differently on two different slabs, so the tone you end up with is a conversation between what we apply and what your building poured decades ago. That is why samples go down on your own concrete and not on a board, and it is why we would rather you saw two or three on the actual floor than picked one from a photograph.

Sheen is the second and it changes the room more than the color does in some cases. A near-matte finish keeps the floor quiet and reads as a surface you stand on, while a higher gloss lifts the light in the room, deepens the color and makes the variation across the slab more pronounced. Between the two there is a range, and where the floor has a lot of character in it the sheen is the lever that decides how much of that character the room actually shows.

Older Lemont buildings and the slabs inside them

We cover Lemont and the surrounding suburbs from our shop in Roselle, with our own crew rather than subcontracted labor. A good deal of the commercial space here sits in older village buildings, much of it in premises that have been put to more than one use over the years, and that produces the kind of slab this finish is made for: sound concrete with a genuine history in it and at least one covering fitted and lifted over the top.

That history is the whole question. In a building with masonry, timber and age already visible, a floor with variation in it belongs and a flat manufactured surface tends to look like it was chosen from a catalogue. Whether your particular slab is sound and clean enough to take color evenly, and how much of its past will read through, is a question about your concrete rather than a general one, and it is what the slab check answers.

Have your Lemont slab looked at first

We work throughout Lemont and the neighboring communities from our shop in Roselle. The slab check is free and commits you to nothing, and on a staining job it is worth having whatever you decide afterwards, because the floor you already own is what determines the answer. We will look at what is under the covering, test how the concrete takes water, put samples down in your own light, and tell you plainly whether staining suits the space or whether something else would serve you better. Call (630) 206-5602 or email info@evolveconcretecoating.com to book it. We answer Monday to Sunday, 9 AM to 6 PM.