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Polished concrete
Polished concrete is the slab itself, ground and honed through progressively finer diamond grits until it takes a sheen. There is no coating on top, so there is nothing to peel, bubble or delaminate. That makes it the longest-lived option for a building that runs hard on a thin maintenance budget.
Where it fits
—Warehouses, distribution and self-storage
—Retail and large-footprint commercial
—Any slab where the owner does not want to recoat in five years
—Buildings that cannot afford long cure downtime
Where it does not
—Slabs with heavy chemical exposure — concrete is porous and will stain
—Floors needing a specific colour; you get the concrete you have
—Badly spalled or patched slabs, where grinding exposes every repair
—Spaces wanting softness or acoustic damping underfoot
Cost of ownership
What it costs to own, not what it costs to install
The highest labour cost at install and the lowest cost afterward. There is no recoat cycle — maintenance is cleaning and occasional re-burnishing. Over ten years it is usually the cheapest floor in the building, which is why distribution and big-box retail default to it.
Questions
What people ask about polished concrete
How long does polished concrete last?
The finish is the slab, so its life is the building's life. Sheen dulls in high-traffic lanes over years and is restored by re-burnishing rather than recoating. There is no failure mode equivalent to a coating delaminating, because there is no coating.
Is polished concrete slippery when wet?
Polished concrete is no more slippery than most hard floors when dry, and less than sealed or waxed surfaces. Wet, it is slippery — the same as tile or sealed stone. Where standing water is expected, a densifier with a traction additive or a different system is specified.
Can any concrete slab be polished?
Most can, but not all should be. Grinding exposes whatever is in the slab: aggregate, old patches, cracks, colour variation from different pours. On a slab with a lot of history, the honest answer is often a coating instead. A test grind in a small area settles it.