How to Make Concrete Look Like Stone or Pavers - Building Your New House @YourNewHouse

Uploaded September 2020 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago

Stone walkways or driveways are beautiful to look at but hard to maintain. Stones can crumble or crack; the ground underneath can settle and disrupt the pattern you’ve spent so much money to create. Our segment featured a technique which lets you achieve the look of patterned stone without the worries and maintenance. The material we used to create this look will surprise you. We patterned a driveway using colored and stamped concrete.

Concrete has two components. It consists of a paste that binds aggregates together. The paste is a mixture of Portland Cement & Water. The aggregate is a mixture of rock & sand

When you’re coloring concrete, you have two choices for the color application process:
In one process, powdered dyes are added to the load of aggregate and paste as it mixes in the cement truck.
We chose the second process. We added powdered colors to the concrete just after we poured our concrete driveway.

You’ll have a choice of more than two dozen colors. Usually two or more colors are combined for highlighting. Careful addition of highlight color creates the natural stone look that disguises concrete.

Coloring Concrete is a Three-Stage Process:

The first step involves mixing a Base Color or Color Hardener into the wet concrete. This powder has hardening chemicals rated at more than five thousand pounds per square inch, so it’s as strong or stronger than the concrete it’s added to. It’s troweled into the concrete twice, an hour or so after the pour, when the concrete is at the right stage of curing – not so hard that the powder scrapes the surface on application & not so wet that it gets totally absorbed by the concrete. We chose Autumn Brown as our base color to give our finished driveway on Old World look.

The second step involves the application of a Release Agent. This powder makes sure that the rubber stamps (you’ll use those later to create the pattern in your concrete) don’t stick to the still-wet concrete. It’s the same concept as coating your hands with flour when you’re baking bread. It’s also a chance for you to add another color for a highlight or “antiquing” effect. After the concrete pour is complete, all you’ll see is the release color until the next day, when the crew returns to wash off the excess powder. The crew may wash too much of it away if they wash it sooner.

Just after the release agent is sprinkled on top of the concrete, the crew stamps a pattern into the concrete using large rubber stamps. The design on these stamps is patterned so that you create a seamless patterned look when two adjacent stamps are placed one against the other. Just as you have a wide choice of colors, you can choose from among dozens of stamp patterns – everything from brick to fieldstone to the look of a single block of natural stone across your driveway. We chose two patterns: an Old World Belgium look with a Yorkstone Slate border.

When the stamp hits the concrete, the moisture in the concrete dissolves the color in the release agent and exposes the “release” chemicals. So the release color fills the grout lines and stone indentations in the pattern to create the desired “antiquing” effect.

Stamping must wait until the concrete is hard enough, roughly two or three hours after the concrete is poured. Stamps have to butt up perfectly against one another so the concrete isn’t “squished” or raised up between stamps. The stamping process indents the concrete about 3/8”. All the work up to this point will take about four or five hours for a standard driveway.

The third step involves Highlighting. A full month after you pour your driveway, the crew returns to seal the concrete. At this time, you have the option of adding another highlight color. The crew will add color to a small section of the concrete to make sure you like the finished look this third color will create. This is a very subtle step; the color is hand-applied. It never covers more than 15% of the patterned area. This is the final coloring stage that completes the deception.

Manufacturers recommend stamped concrete should be cleaned and re-sealed every two to five years, depending on usage & traffic, weather and geographical location.

Concrete stamping costs about 20% more than the price of a normal concrete pour. You can use this technique anywhere you have concrete – driveways, walkways, pool decks, etc. Maintenance is minimal. It’s an easy way to beautify a plain area around your house, and the color should last as long as the concrete

How to Make Concrete Look Like Stone or Pavers - Building Your New House

$Stained Concrete Floors - Building Your New House If you’re in search of a floor treatment that is absolutely indestructible and almost completely maintenance-free, consider an acid-stained concrete treatment. Stained concrete is a technique applied directly to the concrete foundation of your house. The goal is to create a marble or a glazed stone finish at a fraction of the cost. Specialists apply color directly onto the concrete with an acid stain solution. They use a muriatic acid base. It’s the same thing they use in swimming pools, because it’s chlorine-based. Muriatic acid reacts chemically with the lime in your concrete floor. The color base (a liquid solution) also contains particles of steel, so it rusts into your concrete floor. You can choose to stain your concrete floor with a single color wash for a marbleized look, or you can choose a detailed pattern that may involve a number of colors. Depending on the finished look you want, the staining specialists may have to cut into your concrete to outline a specific design pattern. A single design on a brand-new new floor with a large number of cuts (like our three-dimensional kitchen pattern) usually takes about two days, start to finish. The first stain application dries within six hours, then the specialists come back the next day for a second pass. There are four major steps in the concrete staining process. First, the specialists clean and prepare the floor. They clean the concrete with a mild cleaner like TSP (Tri-Sodium Phosphate) – it’s available in any hardware store or home center. You don’t want to clean with an acid wash, because that acid process will interfere with the acid process that stains and colors the concrete. Next the specialists cut the pattern you’ve chosen into your concrete floor. For patterns that require fine cutting for very defined lines, they first lay out the pattern like a stencil on the cleaned concrete floor. They recommend that you don’t cut any deeper than an eighth of an inch into the concrete, otherwise those cuts will collect a lot of dirt. Cuts for the Compass Rose are scored 1/8” wide and 1/16” deep. Timing is everything. Your foundation has to cure for at least six weeks before the specialists can begin to color. If you know you want to stain your concrete floors before you build your new house, then you can cut your chosen pattern into the foundation as soon as three or four days after the foundation is poured. In the third step, the specialists actually apply the stain mixture to the floor. They use a liquid stain mixed with water. It’s applied with a low-pressure mister, like the kind of mister you’d use to spray for bugs in your garden. The volume of liquid applied to the concrete determines the depth and intensity of the finished color. When the specialists spray the stain mixture, color doesn’t appear instantly. Immediately after spraying, the floor looks like you’ve simply spread dirt or dust everywhere. That residue is a by-product of the chemical reaction between the lime in your concrete floor and the acid in the staining mixture. It washes away easily with a brush and water once the staining process is complete. Underneath that layer of residue, the chemical reaction occurs, and the concrete accepts colors over time. The specialists tell us every job is different and unpredictable. Since every concrete foundation has its own unique chemical mixture, every concrete floor reacts differently with the color mixture. It usually takes two or sometimes three applications of acid stain to achieve the color you want. In the first pass, some areas simply won’t react very much. The second or third pass will eventually affect the areas that don’t react the first time. After a few hours, you’ll see some color emerge. That’s when the specialists determine if you’ll need a second or third pass at applying color to achieve your desired finished look. You should wax or seal the finished floor to complete the process. The crew doing this house recommends waxing over sealing because the finished look is nicer, and the paste wax won’t peel off or scratch. They apply one or two coats of wax with a machine buffer to give the stained concrete a nice shine. The acid staining specialists tell us the stained floor will not chip, fade or peel. It will last the lifetime of the concrete floor. The floor “activity” is no different than a tile floor. It stays cool in summer because it’s in direct contact with the ground. If you apply acid stain to your concrete floors in cold climates, you should consider running iron water pipes through the foundation before the concrete pours to heat the floor in winter. The acid staining process costs less than a tile or hardwood application and about the same as a quality carpet. Since there are no carpet allergens or dust mites to deal with, stained concrete is a smart alternative to conventional flooring for people with allergies. Other than the required re-waxing or re-sealing, these floors are maintenance-free.$

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