Shown here are the grey water based stain we placed upon the cement floors. The request was to put grooves into the living room floors to give the effect of 8 foot by 8 foot tiles. And then we were charged with putting upon the cement a mottled light and a bit darker grey to give an aged look to the floor, verses an overall even effect. It took some practice to understand the properties and behavior of this new application method, but over time we mastered it. In the past we had only applied acid stains to cement slab floors, which do not allow much in the way of manipulation – as the acid will do what it chooses to do given the blend of the cement and the amount applied. To us acid stain is applied and then once washed to reveal the effect, it is a bit more of a mystery than this water based (but healthier for us) application.
View our other floors in this project gallery to see two other styles we used. One a very dark, sea blue, and the other a combination of light blue and grey. We have to say that using water based pigmented stains might be our new favorite way of staining cement slab flooring.