Indoor Wet Areas Need Concrete Floors

The gleaming elegance of the polished floors we see in fancy boutiques and big-named department stores – it’s not so long ago we’d have never thought of trying to replicate that look in our own home’s indoor areas.

Traditionally, concrete floors have been hidden away – painted and sealed, or concealed under an assortment of floor coverings, timber boards or vinyls. A lot of the floor types that get laid on top of the concrete slab can involve expensive installation work, ongoing maintenance and eventual replacement costs. However, as all the flooring options change and until the jackhammers are called in, what remains underneath is the original structural concrete.

Transform Your Bathroom

Decorative concrete is a modern and stylish choice for your indoor areas where water is an issue. New print and staining techniques allow the creation of concrete that is a functional and beautiful element of interior style. Special sealing and honing processes create a surface sheen that’s smooth, smart and skid-resistant. It’s a long-lasting flooring option for bare-footed bathrooms. When sand and dirt from the family hike and trip to the beach gets brought into the bathroom, a polished concrete floor is up to the challenge.

Does Your Home’s Indoor Wet Areas Need Concrete Floors?

Today there is nothing stopping you from having your wet area floors miraculously transformed with polished concrete. Remember, concrete doesn’t have to be grey. A complete warm, cream bathroom (including the walls, floor and sink) can be made entirely of concrete. Whether you’re building or renovating a laundry, toilet, shower or bathroom, for a high-gloss, low-maintenance finish, concrete polishing is the answer – it’s a fine, no-wax flooring material. With Geostone’s expert knowledge and state of the art equipment, existing concrete can have extra concrete layers added and refined into a floor that is durable, tough and looks spectacular. It can be honed down to a very smooth surface, have sealing agents applied that provide traction. The initial cost of having artisans design concrete walls and floors may be offset by the decades of use polished concrete can provide.

Skid Resistance

Polished concrete floors may look as smooth as glass, but are comparatively safe to walk on when kept clean and dry. Polished concrete has veritable skid-resistance properties. Like other hard floor types, a polished concrete floor can be slippery when wet, though they tend to be less slippery than waxed linoleum or polished marble. In 2014, a field workshop undertaken by the Concrete Polishers Association of America (CPAA) included a series of tests to measure how much traction ceramic, porcelain and similar surfaces provide. A ‘slip-meter’ tool called a tribometer was used to assess the ‘dynamic co-efficient of friction’ of each flooring material. The CPAA determined that polished concrete is among the safest architectural hard surfaces.

“A most welcome surprise was the evidence that properly polished concrete is one of the safest flooring choices available to the consumer,” said CPAA co-chairperson Jennifer A Faller.

Waterproof First

Moisture prevention is imperative prior to installing a concrete floor in your home’s internal wet areas. They must firstly be properly waterproofed to prevent water transfer and water retention in the sub floor and wall joints.

Concrete Capers for Indoor Wet Areas

• A plaster finish on the laundry walls can be brushed and smoothed; made to look like concrete and so complement the polished concrete floor – it’s an even-tone type of look many of us aspire to bring into our homes.
• Imagine the striking contrast of ochre-coloured honed pebble aggregate shower floor against the all-white walls and glass of the enclosing recess.
• A wall-mounted toilet seat and other fixtures suspended above the expanse of a polished concrete floor can impact a sense of creating more space for an urban cool look that oozes industrial precision.

Concrete can both absorb and release thermal energy quickly and efficiently, enabling you to tailor your concrete choices for the areas where you need warmth or coolness. A grout-less polished concrete floor makes mopping a cinch.

Do your indoor wet areas need concrete floors?