The Colour Through System

Our unique system

Unlike other companies Midland Paving are the only pattern imprinted concrete specialist to offer a unique colour through system, what this means is that we offer a paving system which is coloured throughout the concrete unlike our competitors who only apply colour to the surface of a plain uncoloured base of concrete as shown below.

	Uncoloured base of wet concrete		Applying colour to surface of a plain concrete base

By using only the colour surface system the finished colour can in some cases be affected, this problem will only occur in certain situations where access is poor, if there are no access problems and the surface colour can be applied efficiently then the final appearance will be of equal quality for both our surface colour system and our integral coloured system.

When a wet concrete base is laid access problems can sometimes arise making it near impossible to get to certain areas as it is not possible to get back over the freshly laid concrete to reach certain areas without walking through it, this may be due to high walls and fences or just that the distance to the middle of a large area is out of reach.

When only applying a colour to the surface of the concrete it may sometimes be difficult to get it to those hard to reach areas as the surface colour comes in powder form and is light in weight so can not be applied to a distance greater than around 15ft with consistency; as you can imagine wind conditions could also affect this.

In these situations the result can sometimes be an uneven coverage of colour which may lead to a patchy finish as the plain concrete will show through on areas that didn’t receive as much colour.

Exposed edges

On 90% of projects form work must be erected in order to retain the concrete and to achieve the desired shape of a driveway.

When the concrete has cured the form work is removed occasionally revealing the exposed edges of the concrete, When only applying a colour to the surface of the concrete these edges will appear in plain concrete which can look unappealing, pattern imprinted concrete companies often try to combat this problem by painting or rendering the exposed edges which can crack if not done properly.

This problem doesn’t affect our system as the edges are the same colour as the surface from the start…

Chips and Blemishes

Although pattern imprinted concrete is arguably the most durable paving product on the market today, it is not indestructible therefore it may pick up a chip or blemish at some point during its life time, if this occurs on a driveway with only a surface colour then the plain concrete colour beneath may be revealed, with our colour through system the colour below the surface is the same so any chips or blemish will be less visible.

UV stable

Our colour through system as with our surface colours are also UV stable therefore will not fade from sunlight exposure or in time.

Recently re-sealed driveway

This driveway was installed around four years ago and was recently re-sealed, when re-sealed the colours were as strong after four years as the day it was laid.