Against the Grey

Coloured concrete is fast becoming the material of choice for designers and homeowners across Australia. Featuring in trendy restaurants, retail outlets, offices and footpaths, as well as in and around homes, it is also becoming an increasingly popular finish for building façades and feature walls.

As one of Australia’s leading manufacturers of iron oxide pigments, Concrete Colour Systems (CCS) knows all about bringing colour and life to plain grey concrete.

Referred to as integral colouring or colour through concrete, the special CCS pigments are added to the wet concrete mix prior to placement on site. This gives the concrete a natural, rustic appearance that is both UV resistant and extremely durable against wear and tear.

In addition to durability, fast installation, cost effectiveness and ease of maintenance, one of the main advantages of integrally coloured concrete is that designers have greater scope to introduce contemporary colours and interesting textures to the concrete. Using colour alone, colour with different textures or a variety of coloured aggregates, designers can provide a muted background colour or dramatic colour contrasts.

Designers can opt for a classic broom or trowel finish, which can be combined with other materials to provide a simple textured surface. Alternatively, the refined, smooth, high lustre look of polished concrete emulates the look of quarried stone like marble and provides the perfect alternative to tiles and pavers.

A relatively new finish for the decorative concrete market is stencilled sandblasting, which sandblasts texture into the surface of coloured concrete through stencils or templates to expose the underlying aggregate. This technique was used at the new Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre to provide a locally themed, natural, yet bold finish.

Textured rollers with forest or ocean floor designs can be used to give an interesting effect and designs and objects can also be stamped into the concrete. At the Botanical Gardens in Mackay, designers immortalised the stunning natural surrounds of the region by stamping several local varieties of plant life within feature walls and walkways to create a wonderful array of fossils that complemented the surrounding environment.