By
Amanda Sims
As fans of Luis Barragàn know, the best concrete is colorful. "I like to give my customers an insane range of colors," says Steve Melnick, president of Concrete Central, a Huntington, New York-based company specializing in custom concrete surfaces for counters, sinks, furniture, wall panels, hearths, tiles and more. And when it comes to options, the rainbow really is the limit; Melnick's team offers colored concrete in over 2,000 distinct hues. "We can closely match anything on the Benjamin Moore color wheel," he says. Over the past four years, Concrete Central has seen an "off the charts" spike in demand for concrete finishings—"and colored concrete, more and more." We're seeing colored concrete too, on floors and counters and even walls—perhaps most notably the pink flooring and blue counter in winemaker Noemi Marone Cinzano's Portuguese villa, featured in our August print edition.
To dye a batch of concrete, pigments made specially for this purpose are weighed out by the gram and then mixed into the concrete while it's still wet—and Melnick says it's not unusual for a customer to mix two colors to get a custom blend. (So that's 2,000 options plus.) "We can do everything from bright white to black black," he says, adding that even when a customer elects to keep their concrete a natural grey he'll oftentimes add grey pigment to the mix to brighten the finish. There are also glazes—"really beautiful, like watercolor"—that are applied layer by layer to a finished concrete piece. And stains, which "tend to be a bit more mottled-looking." With so many possibilities, you can get patterns, watercolor effects, and even spray-like finishes on your pieces—which is why it helps to visit your local concrete supplier's storefront or workspace before making a final decision, where (ideally) they'll have samples available.
For a company like Concrete Central, almost everything they do is custom—meaning every finish, dimension, and color/glaze/stain is a line item on the bill. And while coloring your concrete is an additional expense—"we're generally adding another $8 to $10 per square foot for integrated colors," Melnick explains, noting that specialty finishes can be a bit pricier—they're not exorbitant. So next time you find yourself daydreaming of a cobalt blue, poured concrete vanity for that new bathroom, wake up. It can be a reality.
