When you pour a cement floor and treat it with concrete stain or acid stain, you should seal the floor to ensure its remains unharmed and intact. When selecting the proper sealer you should always consider the rate of moisture vapor transmission. Acrylic sealers are the safest sealers on the market and are relatively inexpensive for your concrete stain or acid stain. These sealers will also bond better to smooth surfaces such as an acid stain. The reapplication of these sealers is simple. With a single coat of the solvent-based acrylic as well as a top coat of a water-based acrylic you will be left with a proper finish. Solvent-based sealers are not as hard as water-based acrylics and water-based acrylics are in fact more resistant to oils and greases.

When using a water-based acrylic sealer, your new concrete stain or acid stain floors can be easily maintained with water-based material. At times, concrete stain or acid stain will not have enough calcium hydroxide with which to react which can result in lower color strength. Low color strength in decorative finishes can then result in traffic wearing into the decorative concrete finishes.

There are other sealers which can be applied to a concrete stain or acid stain finish such as urethanes and epoxies. While urethanes and water-based epoxies are growing in popularity, you should be hesitant about using them if your decorative concrete was an acid-etch stain in green or blue. Take caution because the high levels of pH in epoxies and urethanes can distort green and blue colors. Urethanes will form the hardest surface for a decorative concrete coating. These are generally placed over a coating of epoxy as the primer because epoxy will bond better to the concrete and the urethane will bond better to the epoxy. If you select a urethane or epoxy coating as a hardener, the re-coating process is more difficult and requires more prep work than an acrylic coating. You must carefully consider the MVT with epoxies and urethanes because they will form non-breathable membranes.

If the subgrade beneath the concrete is damp this can present a serious problem. After you have applied a concrete stain or acid stain finish to your existing or new concrete, you should wait thirty days before applies another coating in order to ensure that the floor has cured fully. You should also conduct a moisture test to ensure that you can safely apply the epoxies and urethanes. Make sure that you have good water drainage which travels away from the building to prevent further problems in the long term. With a plain epoxy sealer you will have a good MVT property and easier application than other impermeable products. Epoxy sealers are also safer in the long term.