Decorative concrete is the part of the trade that has to survive two audiences at once: the person who chose a colour from a fan deck, and the climate that will fade, craze and traffic that colour for twenty years.
In Australian work that usually means integral oxide rather than a painted stain, a stamp or stencil that can be repaired in kind, and an exposed aggregate that was chosen for the stone — not for a catalogue name. The finish is not a topping you forget. It is the slab.
This hub gathers pieces on coloured concrete for Australian homes, stamped and patterned work, exposed aggregate in hard sun, overlays on tired slabs, and when imitation stone or timber is the wrong brief.
Read them as a set. A driveway in Dubbo and a courtyard in Fitzroy can share a pigment and still need different sealers, joint layouts and expectations. If you are choosing a finish because a photograph looked warm, start with colour. If you are covering an existing slab, start with overlays. If you are pouring new, decide whether the face of the concrete is the architecture, or whether you are asking it to impersonate something else.
