A beautiful surface to consider for a kitchen floor is polished concrete. Here are several of its benefits.
Customised Colour Choices
An advantage of polished concrete is that it's a customised solution. The installers will create the floor in your home according to your instructions. You can choose subtle beige or pale terracotta to add visual warmth. Alternatively, opt for dusky blue or brown. Even though you can install vivid colours, often earthy hues are more relaxing on a kitchen floor.
For inspiration, look at natural surfaces like cliff faces and rock formations, which display many organic hues. Other substances, like sand and red soil, can give ideas as well.
In any case, you may love the raw quality of grey concrete and stick with that shade. Because these floors are smooth and polished, they look sleeker than outdoor concrete, which is rough and porous. The polishing process not only creates a sheen but also refines the surface. This effect is part of the appeal of polished concrete: the juxtaposition of the raw and the sophisticated.
Easy to Maintain
Another benefit of polished concrete is that it's easy to maintain. It's not the type of flooring that looks beautiful but makes you work to enjoy it, such as timber boards.
Polished concrete doesn't require sealing, as the buffing technique makes the floor non-porous. During the later stages, when the contractors use fine pads, they apply a hardener. This product soaks into the concrete, making it denser.
Often, a floor will only need resealing if it has a topical sealant that forms a hard surface cover. These sealants may need to be reapplied because they tend to wear away. The hardener on polished concrete, however, is a penetrating product.
Making the Concrete Feel Warmer and Look Softer
With concrete floors, you have options for warming the floor as well as creating visual softness. To warm the flooring, you can add heating coils underneath. This option is only possible with new concrete because if you polish an existing slab, you won't have access to the bottom.
However, concrete has a high thermal mass, so it can absorb and store heat. So, if you live in a cold climate but have good indoor heating, the floor will absorb some warmth anyway. Plus, concrete provides passive heating if it receives direct sunlight and, therefore, warms up.
You can give polished concrete a visually softer appearance by placing rugs on the floor. Rugs look beautiful scattered on concrete because of the contrast between the rug's softness and the concrete's hardness.
For more info about polished concrete services, contact a local company.