Cement colour

peter999

I repointed part of garden wall with cement few years ago.

The colour of cement back then dried to light grey.
(I used old bag of cement and bag of sharp sand, 1 part to 3 parts)


I'm now repointing another part of wall, using different bags of cement & sharp sand.

The colour of this cement is drying to a tan/light brown.


How can I get it to dry to the light grey, to keep colour consistent, is it the type of sand I am using ?

prosaver

over the weeks it should go a bit lighter but its going to be hard to match ..sorry .. should of done it all in one go

Silver-Surfer_2

Are you in a part of the country where sharp sand is used? It's normally building sand.as

Could be as said, it will weather to the same colour. Chances are it won't as the sand is from a different place.

jakemillspaek

You will have to repoint unless you can get lucky with an additive for the mortar.
We had an extension built and wanted to match the extg brickwork joints.It took several trials using cementone before a decent match was achieved (tested in the footings).

colalba

I am assuming you still have some left to do.


You can buy cement dye to mix in to sand/cement from DIY store. Red, buff and black are generally available. When I did it it took quite a bit of trial and error to find the correct proportions.

Lorian

You shouldn't really need cementone to get it greyer - just add more Portland cement. make a few mixes at various strengths and dab them on a bit of board. leave 24 hours and then put board next to old cement to match up the closest mix.

Johnhowell

When we had some building works done we did some research into the sand used to create the mortar. We found a local ballast/aggregate supplier as Wickes/B&Q sand was too orange. The local supplier looked at a lump of mortar and pointed to the bin of the right sand! The correct colour as well as inclusions..


We then create different ratio mixes to see what each looked like once dry. The final result is excellent.


Good luck.

peter999

Silver-Surfer wrote: »

Are you in a part of the country where sharp sand is used? It's normally building sand.as

Could be as said, it will weather to the same colour. Chances are it won't as the sand is from a different place.

I originally used sharp sand.

Building sand is a lot worse, it comes out orangey, I tested back then few years ago.

peter999

It's not a massive problem.

I just assumed that using any sharp sand again I would get pretty much same colour, same result.


I guess it depends on the source, type & mix of sharp sand.


If I looked at bags of sharp sand from different suppliers, can you tell any difference ?

teneighty

Although different brands of cement will have slightly different shades the sand probably has the strongest effect. It can vary dramatically depending on the area it has come from. The local sand here can vary from a silvery grey to a bright ginger orange. I had some a while ago that must have come up from Devon as it was bright red.

By the way a 1:3 mix is very strong, 1:5 would probably be more appropriate but that will be an altogether different colour and quite difficult to work with if you are using sharp sand.

Ainsley1

Teneighty has the best reply so far, in my opinion. The mix should be made according to the correct cement to sand ratio, one to at least 4 of sand and even five or six can be used depending upon circumstances. The mortar should be less strong than the bricks so that it rather the bricks take any damage -easier to replace than damaged bricks! So, not adjusted on the basis of colour or shade result!!!
For colour cements do vary but as said earlier not as much as building sands. For best match you may need to be selective and you can also buy white sand and cement if you need to lighten the shade rather than change the colour. It does tend to be expensive though compared to ordinary cement/sand.
If you want a close match (best should have been do it all at once as previously posted) it may now be down to lots of trial and error.