Reasons to Upgrade Your Yard with Decorative Concrete
While you might often focus on the inside when planning home renovations, updating the outside living areas will enhance the entire property. Plus, you'll enjoy spending time outdoors in attractive spaces. Read on to discover several reasons to use decorative concrete on your property.
Colour Variations
You might associate concrete with a flat grey paving. While that's one option, you have virtually hundreds of other possibilities. Contractors can imbue the cement with pigments to cover your patio and paths with different colours. To create flooring with a multi-toned, natural feel, they use varied techniques.
For example, stains can cover set concrete, which will react to form tonal shifts. Plus, contractors can combine pigments, dyes, and stains to mimic natural stone. For example, slate can blend grey, blue, tan, and orange colours in the same slab. Concrete mimics this effect and many others. Thus, you could lay a faux travertine patio or a look-a-like pool deck of timber planks.
Texture Possibilities
Organic surfaces, such as stone and timber, rarely feature dead flat facades. Stone shows clefts and rivets, while wood reveals grooves and grains. Decorative concrete can also imitate these nuances as well as replicating the joints between pavers and planks.
Contractors use moulding stamps — available in endless shapes, sizes, and textures — which they press into unset cement. Thus, your decorative concrete path or driveway will not only display gorgeous hue variations that blend with the garden, but it will also show organic-like textures. With so many techniques on offer, you can design your paving in any way you wish to harmonise with different architectures, ranging from traditional to contemporary.
Durable and Low Upkeep
The ideal paving surface will persist and require little upkeep, so you can enjoy its beauty without spending hours on care. Concrete can withstand all the elements and maintain its colours and textures for years. Make sure, though, to follow your contractor's suggestions regarding sealing — they may suggest sealing the paving periodically to protect it from fading and abrasions. Plus, concrete can consist of different densities, so it can easily carry the weight of vehicles and foot traffic.
Safe traction
This decorative paving also makes your home safer by forming solid, stable surfaces, along which you can easily push prams and wheelchairs. Additionally, the textures in the concrete add traction and allow for better grip. Thus, family and friends will less likely trip and fall.