Concrete Staining

We are only going to finish part of our basement to start off with. The finished part will have my gym, a bathroom, and a hallway. The unfinished part has a mechanical room, an open space that might eventually be our office, and a bedroom. Because of how we will likely use this space we don't want to a finished flooring, like carpet, downstairs so we have been planning on staining and sealing the concrete floor in the basement. Earlier this week our concrete guy came by and did some color samples for us.

The colors we chose to sample (from left to right) were Cocoa Brown, Sumatra Brown, Nutty Brown, and Black Diamond. We thought that the Black Diamond looked like the concrete was burnt, and the Sumatra Brown looked like we were trying to cover up a crime scene. Those two colors were out. That left us with Nutty Brown and Cocoa Brown. We both preferred the Nutty Brown but it is a bit on the dark side and there is no natural light in the basement so we felt it would look even darker downstairs. That leaves us with Cocoa Brown (the one on the very left). I like the color but I am not sure that there is enough color difference between that and the concrete to justify the extra cost. We are now contemplating just sealing the concrete or maybe just painting the floor in the bathroom. Skipping the staining also means that we could get to work on the basement even sooner. 

The Husband has a meeting set up with our concrete guy and they are going to discuss our options and the schedule but for now it looks like we are going to skip the staining and figure out our concrete finish  later. 

Concrete stain color samples