I have started building my round house. The Walthers' kit has a concrete floor that is very shinny. The foundation is part of the red colored plastic that is used for the brick walls and will need to be painted. I was thinking about painting it "aged concrete", but that color is very yellow. I tried adding white to lighten up the yellow color and it is still to yellow. Concrete should be more grey. The regular concrete color makes it look to new. What would you recommend. BTW I am using PollyScale paints. Thanks for any help.
Dark grey-black. Almost all of the roundhouses I've worked in the floors were pretty filthy with grease, oil, slag, sand, you name it. Once in a while we'd strip the floor with acid and paint the floor grey with yellow safety strips around the pits. Don't forget all the little puddles of water and oil , for some reason the floors were always wet, worse on hot humid summer days. Randy
Finally I have something I can contribute as my very first post. I use to work as a concrete finisher, expecally in industrial and some railroad bridges. Before all the oil, soot, grease and age an older Facility would have concrete made from local river sand and aggragate. So depending on where you are, yellows reds, tan and browns could be accurate ( faded tones, think clay colors). Around the 1940's ( not a absolute number) and the closer we get to present day the more we depended on quarrys rather then local rivers, colors became more consistant and closer to white/offwhite/lightgray. Industrial concrete floors are usually given a " burned finish" to make it less asorbant so its easier to wash off all your grease, ash, oil etc. A burned finish tends to look a bit shiney. Look at the concrete floor in your garage, thats a burned finish. All the grease oil soot weathering is what will make any color convincing. Through out the past centruy there have been many attempts of coating concrete floors for various reasons. Again, some of you may have a garage with a painted floor with sand mixed in to keep the floor from being slippery while making the concrete even less asorbant. You're yellow probably fits, but would only look right after weathering. BTW, dosnt adding white make the yellow brighter? Would'nt adding a little black make it a bit more dingy, less vibrant?
The color all depends on what the concrete is exposed to, what the source of its aggregate is, and how long and how often it sees sunlight.
Moontears- Welcome to the world of posters. Thank you for your detailed and informative answer. Before reading it, I only knew of two colors- aged concrete in the bottle and concrete in the bottle. For a little tiniting of whatever local color is mixed in, try Arizona Rock and Mineral powders. A little goes a very long way.
Moontears, great first post. Thanks for sharing. For older structures, I always start with aged concrete then use various shades of grimey black, oily black, mud and weather it.
Thanks for the help. I hadn't thought about where the sand and gravel came from and how that would effect the color. Thanks again for the help.
