Benefits of Installing a Polished Concrete Kitchen Floor
If you're looking for a kitchen floor option, why not consider polished concrete? Here are some of its benefits.
Design Customisation
Polished concrete flooring is not bought from a shop or factory shelf and installed. Instead, the concrete is created and finished in your home. This process allows you to customise it however you wish. If you're polishing an existing slab, the contractors can add stains in different earthy colours, which will react with the concrete's ingredients to form marbling patterns. You can also choose the shine level of the concrete; it can be polished to display a matte look, a soft sheen, or a high polish.
If you're pouring new concrete or an overlay, you have even more choices as you can select which aggregates to add to the cement. They can include pebbles, seashells, and coloured glass pieces. Once the polishing process begins, the decorative elements produce colours and patterns across the floor.
Seamless
Polished concrete is one of the few flooring options that form a seamless surface without joints or grout lines. Wooden floorboards create lines between each plank, and tiles create a grout border around each one. Polished concrete, though, is continuous and uninterrupted, so the flooring isn't broken up into segments that can appear visually busy. For this reason, polished concrete is ideal for compact kitchens where you want to evoke a sense of spaciousness. Seamless flooring is also easy to clean, as it doesn't have grooves that can catch dirt and debris. You can just push a mop over the concrete, and you won't have to worry about scrubbing the grout.
Durable
Another benefit of polished concrete flooring is that it's durable and can handle heavy foot traffic without damage. It's harder than wood, which can dent if someone walks over floorboards in high heels. Polished concrete doesn't easily scratch either. The latter stages of the polishing process involve applying a densifier that solidifies the concrete further. In any case, you can repolish concrete in the coming decades, giving it new life. Not many flooring materials offer this refinishing capacity, besides wood, which can be re-sanded.
Warmth
If you're laying an overlay, you can install underfloor heating underneath the concrete. The floor will warm up, and the heat will spread throughout the room. You can also add a sense of warmth by placing rugs on the floor. The softness of a rug and the hardness of concrete provide the perfect foil for one another. Because concrete floors are seamless, you may even be able to get away with a busy, patterned rug, as it won't have to compete with a pattern of tiles or planks.