Concrete effect walls,
in mineral plaster, not paint

Most of what sells as concrete effect paint is an acrylic with grit in it, rolled on and stippled. It reads as textured paint, because that is what it is. Beton Stucco is mineral plaster laid in thin coats with a trowel, so the tone sits inside the material rather than on top of it. The cloud is real depth, made by the blade and by the way each coat dries back. That costs more and it asks for a steadier hand. It is also the only way we know to get a wall that still looks like concrete when you are standing a foot away from it. If what you want is a tin and a brush, tell us — we will point you at lime paint and be straight that it will not read as concrete.

A concrete finish is thin, so the wall shows through it. Hollows, roller stipple left from old emulsion, tape lines across plasterboard joints and soft or dusty patches all come up through the coats. Skimmed and flat is what we want, primed so the coat pulls off evenly instead of drying in patches. Corners matter more than faces: a wavy arris or a rounded external angle is obvious in low light, and no amount of trowel work hides it. Old walls usually need making good first, and we would rather do that properly than lay good material over a bad surface. If you are ordering to lay it yourself, budget time for preparation, not only for plaster.

Concrete reads as concrete because of scale. Big, slow, soft variation across a whole wall looks like a cast panel. Small busy mottling looks like a sponge effect from thirty years ago. We work a whole wall in one go, keeping a wet edge, changing the direction of the blade so no pattern repeats, and stopping only at a corner or a natural break. Two pairs of hands on a long wall is normal. The second coat is where the look is made — thin, pulled tight, then left alone before it is burnished. Overworking flattens the cloud and you cannot put it back without recoating. That judgement is most of what we teach on the course.

Unsealed, the finish is porous and will take a mark from oil or wine. In a kitchen or a downstairs loo we seal it, which makes it wipeable and slightly warms the tone — worth seeing on a board first, because sealing always deepens the colour a little. Behind a hob or a sink we put waterproofer on before the sealer. A shower enclosure is a different job: for water running down the wall day after day we would steer you to tadelakt, which is made for exactly that, or to pastellone if the floor is in scope too. Concrete effect is perfectly happy in a bathroom that gets steam and splash. It is not the answer inside the cubicle.

Concrete covers everything from a warm putty to a cold blue-grey, and the one you pick behaves differently depending on which way the room faces. North light pulls grey towards blue and can make a fashionable mid-grey feel like slate by four in the afternoon. South light warms it and flattens the cloud. We tint by machine to the reference you give us — NCS, RAL, a fan deck chip — so the batch is repeatable if you come back for another tub. /pages/colours explains what we need from you and how we handle references, and a sample board in your exact colour costs a great deal less than repainting a room you have gone off.