Expert Restoration for Terrazzo Floor Systems
Terrazzo is a beautiful composite of marble, quartz, and granite chips. It's incredibly durable but requires specialist diamond care when it loses its shine.
- 1Diamond honing removes stains and surface 'yellowing'.
- 2Mechanical polishing provides a long-lasting, high-gloss finish.
- 3Repairs for cracks and 'pitting' in the terrazzo matrix.
- 4Eliminates the need for constant waxing and stripping.
- 5Highly durable and easy to maintain once professionally restored.
Terrazzo is essentially a 'living' floor—a mixture of stone chips set in cement or resin. In many older Preston schools and public buildings, you'll find traditional cement-based terrazzo that has been 'covered up' for years. When uncovered, it often shows staining, cracks, and a dull, grey finish.
We specialise in uncovering the potential of terrazzo. By using diamond honing, we can grind away years of dirt and old coatings, revealing the vibrant stone chips beneath and polishing them to a high-gloss, durable finish.
Because terrazzo is essentially a solid, poured or pre-cast composite rather than a laid surface material, it has no seams for dirt to collect in and, once correctly restored, is genuinely one of the most durable and low-maintenance floors available for public buildings. Its longevity is part of why so many mid-century schools and civic buildings still have their original terrazzo intact beneath later coverings.
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Moving away from 'The Wax Cycle'
For decades, the standard way to maintain terrazzo was to apply a sacrificial wax coating. This wax quickly scuffs, turns yellow, and needs to be 'stripped and sealed' every year. This is a messy, expensive, and outdated process.
Our approach is to mechanically polish the stone itself. A diamond-polished terrazzo floor doesn't need wax; the shine comes from the stone. It's more durable, looks better, and is much cheaper to maintain in the long run.
Repairing the 'Pits'
In older terrazzo, small stone chips can occasionally pop out, leaving 'pits' that collect dirt. During the restoration process, we can 'grout' the floor with a colour-matched slurry that fills these pits, making the surface perfectly smooth again.
Cement-based versus resin-based terrazzo
Not all terrazzo is the same underneath the stone chips. Older, traditional terrazzo is typically cement-based, poured in situ and divided by metal strips into bays to control cracking. Newer terrazzo is often resin-based, either poured or pre-cast into tiles, and behaves differently under diamond tooling.
We identify which type we're working with before restoration begins, since cement-based terrazzo generally needs a coarser starting grit and more passes to achieve the same clarity that resin-based terrazzo reaches more quickly. Getting this wrong wastes time and can leave an uneven finish across a floor with mixed repair history.
- Cement-based terrazzo often needs a coarser starting grit sequence.
- Resin-based terrazzo generally polishes up faster and more consistently.
- Metal divider strips in cement terrazzo need careful, non-snagging treatment.
- Mixed repair history across a floor is identified before work begins.
Before you sign anything
- • Diamond polishing is superior to traditional waxing for terrazzo floors.
- • Restoration reveals the natural beauty of the stone chips.
- • Repairs for pitting and cracks can be integrated into the cleaning process.
- • Cement-based and resin-based terrazzo need different diamond grit sequences.
- • Metal divider strips are treated carefully to avoid snagging during polishing.
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