Extend Your Home With Polished Outdoor Concrete Flooring
The UK is a small island with a large population, which means space is limited. This means that homeowners are constantly on the look out for more useable space, without having to extend or convert.
A popular option involves extending your living space into the garden. One way to do this is to dissolve the boundaries between your interior and exterior by matching the flooring in both areas. In this blog the DirectStone team looks at ways to extend your home using polished outdoor concrete flooring.
Polished Concrete Outside and Inside
One of the many benefits of polished concrete flooring is that it looks as attractive whether it’s indoors or outdoors. Seamless flooring that leads from your living room or kitchen onto an exterior dining or relaxing space, creates a new kind of open plan living area. And the maintenance for both the indoor and outdoor portion of your new room is light touch.
The DirectStone team is often asked whether outdoor concrete flooring needs to be polished in a different way from indoor polished concrete. The good news is that there’s minimal difference. In both cases the surface paste of the concrete is ground back, using our HTC Superfloor™ diamond grinding system. The flooring is then sealed to protect the surface against staining. For exterior concrete flooring we can add a fine grit to stop the surface being slippery when wet.
Exterior Polished Concrete Finishes
Whether you’re planning a polished concrete patio, or an ‘island’ demarcated by concrete flooring in your garden, DirectStone offers a range of finishes to complement your garden aesthetic:
- Exposed Aggregate. The surface paste is ground back to expose the aggregate beneath. It is then polished to a gloss, matte or satin sheen and stained to protect the surface. This is a popular finish because the natural patterning enclosed within your concrete is exposed. Each mix is unique to the concrete mix used and it’s perfect for use in a garden setting.
- Stained Concrete. If you’re extending indoor space into the garden, you may wish to maintain the tones of your kitchen or living area in order to create a seamless transition. This can be achieved by using stainer. This semi-transparent colouration brings out the natural texture of the concrete, and enhances the seamless transition between indoor and outdoor concrete flooring.
- Coloured Concrete. DirectStone uses dry shake colour hardeners to achieve a range beautiful colours for your concrete flooring. In addition to providing a glorious variety of colours to match to your home and garden, these provide texture and enhance slip resistance, help with the reflection of natural light, and bring out the texture and patterning of the concrete.
Working With DirectStone
We’re a family-run business and for over a decade now the DirectStone team has been creating beautiful polished flooring for residential homes and gardens, refurbishments and commercial interior and exterior settings. We’re happy to offer guidance, advice and free no obligation quotes for concrete polishing, repairs and restoration projects.
The DirectStone team provides polished concrete flooring throughout the UK, mainly in London, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk.
If you would like to talk to us about outdoor concrete flooring call our friendly team on 01525 863920/07814 734600 or email your enquiry on simon@directstone.co.uk.
