Tinted sealer
Pigment blended into the sealer topcoat, so the color rides in the film rather than in the concrete.
- Use case
- Fast refresh of faded colored or stamped work
- Durability
- Lowest — wears with the sealer and needs reapplication
- Price band
- Low to mid
How does tinted sealer work?
A tinted sealer is the one-day answer to a fifteen-year-old stamped patio: clean or strip, roll or spray the tint, and the color is back that afternoon for a fraction of a recolor. Understand what you bought, though, because the pigment is in the film — when the sealer wears through at the door and along the tire path, the color wears with it, and you are on a three to five year reapplication cycle for as long as the slab lasts. Keep the tint light and translucent unless the customer genuinely wants a painted look, since heavy pigment loads read as opaque and bury the texture that made the stamp worth doing. The failure mode is almost always adhesion rather than color: tinted sealer over an unstripped old acrylic, over a damp slab, or over a slab with no vapor retarder beneath it will blush white or delaminate in sheets. Do not put a film-forming tinted sealer on a slab that has to breathe, or on exterior work in a freeze-thaw climate, without confirming the product is rated for it.
Screen colors are approximate. Obtain a physical sample from the manufacturer before specifying. Color names and swatch systems are manufacturer trademarks, shown here as editorial reference with a link to the official chart.