Do you know the single-most important ingredient in a concrete countertop that can make or break a business? If you thought concrete, think again. It might surprise you to know that it is actually countertop sealers.
You can make the most beautiful concrete countertop in the world, but in the end it’s the concrete countertop sealer that determines almost all of concrete’s performance characteristics. From stain resistance to heat resistance and scratch resistance and food safety to ease of cleaning and maintenance. Short of making sure your concrete doesn’t crack, everything else depends on the sealer.
Meeting performance challenges
Professionals worldwide are creating amazing products including kitchen and bathroom countertops, sinks, tubs, furniture, fire pits, wall panels and planters. The possibilities are endless. While most of these creative concrete products generally require some kind of protective sealer, kitchen and bath countertops and sinks have by far the most challenging and demanding performance requirements.
Especially in a kitchen, homeowners expect their countertops to be stain-resistant, heat-resistant, scratch-resistant, food safe, easy to clean and easy to maintain. After all, the most popular countertop surfaces, granite and engineered quartz, meet all these criteria. Why shouldn’t concrete?
In the past, concrete countertops got a bad reputation as stain prone and high maintenance because of the wax and acrylic sealers once used. Unfortunately, this reputation persists even today, despite that most concrete countertop professionals are now using high-performance coatings to provide excellent protection to their creations. There is still a lot of confusion among consumers, designers and even concrete countertop pros about sealers, and there are still basic acrylic sealers and penetrating treatments marketed for concrete countertops.
I’m a strong, vocal advocate for using a high-performance coating to protect concrete from stains and acids. I’ve invested an extraordinary amount of time and resources testing and reporting the stain performance of a wide variety of sealers. I’ve always used coatings, even back in the late 1990s when they required a full-suit respirator, HVLP sprayer and several days to apply properly.
Since then, technology has advanced dramatically. The popular coatings today are water-based urethanes applied with a foam roller. Many very successful concrete countertop professionals exclusively use urethanes on countertops. They’ve done so for years because their businesses and their reputations depend upon the performance, consistency and dependability urethane coatings provide.
Urethane coatings are tough
Coatings work by forming a physical barrier that prevents stains from everything that comes in contact with the concrete. Just as car paint makes a car beautiful, it also keeps it from rusting. In contrast to barrier-forming coatings, penetrating treatments such as reactive densifiers and repellants leave the concrete surface bare and vulnerable to acid etching. Etching is physical damage that can
Urethanes are coatings that have properties which make them an excellent choice for sealing concrete. Urethanes (especially those tailored for concrete countertops) are highly chemical-resistant and are inert once cured. They’re very heat- and sunlight-resistant, with the very best showing no yellowing effects of strong UV exposure in exterior applications. And finally, they’re tough. Most wood and vinyl floors have urethane coatings that protect the floor. If those are tough enough for a floor, why can’t urethane coatings be tough enough for a countertop? In addition, a urethane coating doesn’t depend upon the concrete to develop its properties. The types of urethanes the pros use are catalyzed, meaning there’s a part A and a part B. These two components are what create the protection.
The underlying concrete has no real impact on the performance of the urethane coating, as long as the concrete is not weak, overly porous or full of pinholes, characteristics that professional-grade concrete used in countertops rarely has. In stark contrast, some boutique and esoteric reactive finishes only work with proprietary concrete mixes. Their effectiveness and dependability can unexpectedly vary if they’e used on a different mix.
Still, nothing is perfect
However, coatings are by no means perfect. I’ve written about what the “ideal concrete countertop sealer” is before. It would be easy to apply with little skill or practice, work on any kind of concrete, resist stains and prevent etching damage from acids. Additionally, it would be scratch-proof, heat-proof and sunlight-proof. It would work fast and be inexpensive. Unfortunately, no such sealer exists. Today’s water-based urethanes come close. However, they do have two drawbacks.
The first drawback is scratching. Some finishes scratch easily, while others are harder to mar. Generally, the scratch resistance of a finish is subject to its abrasion resistance. This is a characteristic quantified by the Taber abrasion test. Urethanes have some of the best abrasion resistance of any coating.
Granted, even the best urethane can still scratch. Unless a coating is made of diamonds, it will scratch. There is no way around this. I believe this is far preferable to staining and etching for the following reasons.
You should not cut on any countertop — ever — except wooden butcher block. Soft surfaces like laminate will scratch, and hard surfaces like granite or quartz will ruin knives. I’ve found that customers would rather not have to worry about staining and etching (and watermarks — that should never be an issue) than have something they can cut on.
Cutting is a deliberate act, whereas spills of lemon juice, red wine and oil are accidental Prevent the deliberate act of cutting by setting expectations with the clients. Put in the contract and the care and maintenance guide that they can’t cut on the countertops or it voids the warranty. If this is something you still worry about, give your customer a wooden cutting board with your logo as a nice gift.
Ensuring the bond
The second drawback is the possibility of adhesion failure. Unlike simple penetrating treatments that get wiped on and soak into whatever they’re applied to, coatings require some surface preparation, often acid etching or light honing. This is to promote adhesion which ensures a strong and permanent bond to the concrete. A coating’s most common failure is peeling. The cause of nearly all adhesion failures is inadequate or incorrect surface preparation.
A very common cause of adhesion failure is the assumption that dry grinding is the same as wet grinding for surface preparation. If you’re going to apply a coating sealer, you need to stop at 200 grit. Going further will not only make the concrete too smooth to have any “tooth” for the sealer to bond to It is also unnecessary work because the sealer determines the sheen of the concrete.
However, grinding to 200 grit with dry pads is not the same as grinding to 200 grit with wet pads. The dry polishing process creates concrete cuttings which don’t flush away like they do with wet polishing. Because the powdery cuttings tend to remain under the polishing head longer, they break down and act as finer polishing media.
A “200 grit” finish with dry pads is actually like a much finer finish, something like 800 grit. Additionally, the powdery cuttings get forced into the open concrete surface pores. This results in contaminating the surface, and that can cause adhesion failure.
Worth the effort
Those who advocate treatments rather than coatings cite scratching and adhesion failure as reasons to stay away from coatings. As I’ve just explained, these issues are manageable. Far more manageable than installing a kitchen countertop that ends up staining and etching from red wine, olive oil and lemon juice.
High-performance urethane coatings are worth the effort to provide peace of mind. Coating technology has advanced to the point that today’s urethanes are water based. They are relatively easy to roll on, very scratch resistant and also great looking.
So if many large and successful concrete countertop companies choose a urethane coating that keeps their customers happy and coming back, why shouldn’t you?
