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Polished Concrete Floors – the Retail Flooring Solution?

The polished concrete floor is one the most perfect of retail flooring solutions. Like the home, the concrete floor can offer so many benefits and advantages.

Here we highlight just five of the benefits…

#1 Robust

Concrete is incredibly hard. It is a simple mix and one that has been around in some guise or other for over 5,000 years.

Modern concrete consists of three basic components: water, aggregate such as rock, sand or gravel and cement. This cement, in powder form, acts as a binding, very much how eggs bind a cake mix together. The water causes a reaction to occur in the mix that means eventually, the concrete floor or slab will dry to become hard and robust.

And when we say robust, we mean really tough. It can withstand all kinds of pressure, forces and uses. From heeled shows to heavy machinery, from dragging furniture and rails across it, to the hordes of stampeding Christmas rush shopper.

#2 Easy to clean and maintain

An important aspect for most commercial customers and their chosen retail flooring solutions is how easy it is to clean and to maintain. You don’t want it looking glossy and shiny on day one, only to find that by day three, it looks dull and by day five, it is chipped and damaged.

Concrete floors, once they are dry, will be sealed. This top layer of sealer will ensure that the scuffs, scrapes and stains do not damage the actual concrete floor beneath. It can be easily swept of vacuumed if you so desire. It can be mopped with an ordinary mop.

You can, in high traffic areas, also buff it to maintain its high gloss and professional looking finish. In other words, the cleaning is easy and the maintenance minimal.

#3 High gloss finish without being slippery

We’ve already mentioned this but we think it deserves a bullet point all of its own.

One of the reasons why concrete is a popular retail flooring solution is because it looks simply stunning. Who would have thought that the grey, rough and industrial looking concrete floor could become something so beautiful?

The fact is concrete can be made to look like another material and the one that some of the modern shopping centres and malls have opted for is marble. The high gloss detailing is exquisite and gives a real impression of luxury and decadence.

#4 Colours and detailing

And this brings us nicely onto our fourth point – the colours and the detailing that you can add to a concrete floor.

Take a walk in any shopping centre or new built shop, or even existing ones, and you will see there are different colours in the floor and different detailing. There may be decorative stamping around the edge, or a section of the floor may look different to denote a change of use in that areas.

People also like the bright, white floors, complete with flecks of diamond type materials in the surface. Little do they realise that some of these flickering ‘diamonds’ are the aggregate in the mix, buffed to a high sheen.

#5 Health and safety

There is, of course, an important aspect that anyone considering commercial polished concrete floors will need to consider and that is how good concrete floors are for people to use, day in and day out.

When laid by a reputable and knowledgeable firm, concrete floors should be perfectly flat and level. Neither will they crack on drying. They should also remain smooth and not present any kind of fall or tripping hazard.

It is also easy to think that because of the high gloss finish that a concrete floor could be slippery. However, when you mop and buff with the correct materials, the floor is rarely slippery unlike other kinds of floors that are waxed.

Clearly at entrances and exits you will need to have some kind of mat, more so when the weather is wet as this helps to dry the souls of shoes before hitting the concrete floor but overall, this flooring type works well with retail health and safety.

In summary

As retail flooring solutions go, concrete floors are one of the wisest and most cost-effective solutions you can invest in for your business.

Even better, in some retail premises, there is already a concrete floor under the top layer and flooring. It may mean a small layer of fresh concrete on top but this too can be sealed, buffed and treated to create the most amazing floor.

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