CONCRETE WALL EFFECT PAINT | KCC AURORA PRESTIGE CONCRETE EFFECT PAINT REVIEW

I've been saying that I'm gonna do a room makeover to my room like forever ever since I moved to a new home. Well, that new home has been 2 years over, and only now did I finally do what I've planned from the start. Since we've been stuck at home for a couple of months during the Movement Control Order by the government, we had so much free time which made me stressed out looking at a dull space every day. That's when I started buying deco stuff online to change the environment but that didn't seem enough. We couldn't really see much change. So my husband and I started to have a bit of a discussion which resulted in us focusing on one part of our house to start with and we chose our bedroom because that's where we hang out most of the time. We discussed what kind of theme we wanted our room to be so both of us would be comfortable with. Thank goodness both of us had a quite similar taste so there wasn't 'much' debating. That led us to choose the concrete style plus wood interior like modern Airbnb's nowadays. So keep on reading to see the results.

My husband and I always loved the new concrete type of homes with simple modern decor. We aim to do that when we finally get our own home, but for now, having this kind of style in our own bedroom will be good enough. 

The first thing we had to do was paint our walls and I think our walls were calling out to be painted because KCC sponsored us paint at the right timing. And best of all, its the type of paint that could produce the effect we wanted. Yes, the concrete wall effect paint for our feature wall. Guess who was beyond happy either than me, of course, my husband. So I let him choose the color.

KCC recently just launched a new set of paint and I was lucky enough to be some of the few to be able to try out this paint. KCC AURORA Prestige Concrete Effect is their newest paint that will be able to recreate a concreate wall effect. It has several colours of greys like concrete and also other colors than grey as well. You'll be surprised at how pretty the colors they offer that I myself thought of choosing the green concrete texture but my husband wanted the hues of grey. So I let him choose as I hate hearing him complain if he doesn't like something. Besides, their grey selections of colors were all very pretty too. It made choosing one color very difficult indeed.

So we chose KCC AURORA Prestige Concrete Effect in 505- Besinar. It has a combination hue of grey and brown, which makes it look a bit goldish too. Which we thought it would turn out great with our wood furniture.

The time finally came for us to start painting. I actually had a technician come over to get rid of the ugly air-conditioner wire for this paint. LOL... I wanted it to look perfect and that wire was surely not in the right place. I am until now holding a grudge to the man who installed the air-conditioner in my room. He was one lazy one. Thank goodness the technician that I hired was a good one, he even suggested to transfer the wire at the back of the wall instead and changed the plug to a switch instead for it to look neat.

Enough of that, so when I got my paint and ready to paint, we had to do a bit of study first because this kind of paint is an effect of paint, so the way on how it's painted is rather different from the normal paint we use. There will be 3 types of different paint layered to create the effect so you can expect this kind of paint may take a bit of time. I'll list down the steps below.

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1. UNDERCOAT

The first layer of paint is called UNDERCOAT which I think should be the same color for all colors offered for the Aurora Prestige Concrete Effect. The Undercoat is a greyish cement color paint, which is applied with a roller just like normal paint. This didn't take much time for us to apply, about an hour over only for 2 walls. We used 3 1L tubs for this.

2. TEXTURE COAT

The 2nd layer is the most important as it plays the role of the color and effect style wanted. The texture coat is color coded which means that this is the layer where you could choose what type of color you want for your wall. As I said earlier, I chose 505-Besinar.

The undercoat is to be dried about an hour or two but it actually only took a few minutes for it to dry. We left our undercoat to dry for a couple of hours since before we started on the texture coat using a cement trowel. Yes! We were told to use a cement trowel for this texture paint so we could recreate the concrete effect on the walls. My husband thought I was bluffing at first when I told him to buy a trowel to start painting. Then he finally got the reason why. The texture coat texture is also different from the undercoat. It's thicker and kinda have like the same texture as fresh cement mix which was pretty cool. 

So we started applying the paint as if we had to cement the walls, and it was very awkward as it was my husband's and my first time even using a trowel. The instructions were to coat 2 layers of texture coat to the walls, so we did one coat first and let it dry, then we added another layer after.

We got the reason why it needed 2 coats because the 2nd coat acts to cover up the first coat that wasn't covered. So the whole wall would change color and not show the undercoat color below. It only took a few minutes to see the result as the paint dries up very fast. From there we could see the texture of the wall and it's truly a beauty.

3. SMOOTHEN SURFACE

Using sandpaper, the instructions where to smoothen the wall for rough parts before proceeding to the next step. I didn't like to do this because I couldn't stand the scratch noise. LOL... So I made my husband do most of it.

4. GLAZE

Even without Glaze, the wall showing was already beautiful enough, but with Glaze, it added an extra spark as the color became to stand out even more. The glaze is also a protective layer for the paint so after applying it, when you feel the wall, you won't feel any dust particles like our normal painted walls. The glaze layer kinda makes the wall waterproof and creates a smooth texture to the walls once dried. 

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Once the walls were done, well actually we finished one half of the wall first because the paint wasn't enough. So we left one wall out first and started drilling to hang the TV and also the hanging shelves. We left the other wall with just undercoat paint for a week before we finally got the texture coat paint and started to paint again. That's another benefit of this paint, you can leave it undone for some time and work on it again but it won't affect the paint effect. Even while doing the texture coat, which really took time and work to do, we left it undone halfway but the walls still look the same. Because I did the lower walls while my husband did the upper walls. We did the paint at night which I started first, then I went to bed and my husband did the upper walls in the middle of the night. But after the walls were done, it didn't look bad at all. Some effect paints can't be left undone or it won't work.

Here is the final result of my walls and it has surely changed the ambience of my room. Just with paint, it could actually turn a space more lively. Our room kinda feels like a hipster Airbnb now. We also got more paint to paint the rest of the walls of our room to match this wall. But we didn't get effect paint because that will be too much. Having textured effect paint at one corner of a space is good enough. The texture effect paint was quite the amount of work but it was worth it. Seeing the results with texture made it one of a kind and it looks great in pictures too. I've tried doing my product photoshoots with this wall as my background and it made my pictures stand out. No bluffing, the effects of the paint are just really nice. We thought that it'll be difficult to create the supposed effect at first but it turns out, this DIY project was easy. Didn't even need an expert to create stunning effects because there was no specific pattern to follow, you can do the effect even with your eyes closed. LOL...

Another thing that we came to appreciate with this paint is that it has a very low odour, almost to none at all. I could even sleep in the room while my husband was still painting and waking up not remembering we painted the walls last night. Even my husband was surprised at how he couldn't scent much odor, that's what made him work on the walls more without having to tell him too. He kept repeating how cool is the paint, it has no odour. LOL... Other than that, the paint is very easy to clean too. If it drops on the floor, we just take a tissue and wipe it off and it leaves no stain. Unless you leave it to dry for a while, it does leave a bit of stain, but rather than wiping it off with a tissue, you need to just scratch it off the floor. When it hardens, it becomes a rubbery texture, which makes it easy to peel off from the floor. Besides that, I came to know that this paint also doesn't contain any lead or mercury, so it's safe to use around kids.

If you're in the mood to paint your walls too, KCC is currently running a contest, 'Paint to Bergaya' where you could win a grand prize of iPhone 11 Pro Max and many more prizes! All you have to do is purchase a minimum of 1L KCC paint and send your receipt through WhatsApp.

So take this chance, who knows you'll be lucky and win something and here's no need to head down to stores as you can easily get KCC's paint at their official online stores below:

Shopee: https://shopee.com.my/kccmy.os