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Hi team,
I have recently water blasted my courtyard pavers and the colour of them has also been stripped off. I did a full revamp and have added new polymeric sand and have removed all the staining etc. I am just not sure how to treat the pavers now as I would love to get some of the sandstone colour back in to them if possible. If i just put a sealer over them they will look bland. Any advice? the first pic show what they look like after the wash and the second one shows the clean in progress.
looking at all the products you have they appear to be clear or glossy sealer or dark charcoal colours for driveways... in the second pic where the pavers are wet, that is the colour I am looking for.
If they are true sandstone pavers @todervico, or coloured concrete pavers, the colour isn’t just on the surface. With concrete pavers, the colour is normally added as an oxide mixed through the cement when the paver is made, so it can’t really be “stripped off” by water blasting. In that case, sealing them won’t bring back a lost colour because the colour should still be there.
What can happen, though, is that a previous wet-look sealer has been removed during water blasting. Those sealers deepen the colour significantly, which is why the pavers often look much richer when wet. When the sealer is stripped off, the pavers can look pale, chalky, or bland by comparison, which sounds very much like what you’re seeing.
A simple test is to wet a small section of pavers with water. If that wet section gives you the sandstone tone you’re chasing, then a wet-look sealer is likely what was there before, and reapplying a similar type of sealer should restore that appearance. It won’t add colour as such, but it will deepen and enrich the existing tones.
If, on the other hand, the pavers were concrete that had been painted or coated in a sandstone colour at some point, then the water blasting may have removed that coating. In that situation, clear sealers won’t bring the colour back, and you’d be looking at either recolouring products specifically designed for concrete pavers or repainting them with a suitable paving paint system.
At this stage, I’d suggest identifying the paver type and doing a small test patch with a wet-look sealer. That will quickly tell you whether sealing alone will give you the look you want before committing to the whole area.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Mitchell
