Concrete! Stamped or Textured?

Stamped or Textured? That’s a question I run into a lot. It is fairly hard to explain fully to my customers. Technically both are stamped concrete with a twist. Texture is accomplished using mats with just texture as you see here. There are several textures. This one is a slate texture. And then there are different slate textures. This just happens to be the one I have. When I say texture that is it, just texture. The lines or joints in the concrete are created either by hand jointing as in this picture or saw cutting.

Stamped concrete is technically the same, it gives you texture and the joints all at once. In other words the texture and joint patterns are built in the stamp whereas the texture stamp is texture alone, no joints. With stamping you get patterns  like brick, stone, rocks and so forth.  So I hope you can understand. Texture is just texture with the joints custom-ally installed by me. Stamped gives you pattern and texture.

Let me tell you one advantage to texture. You control the joints. Depending on the size of the area you may not want a busy pattern that is offered by stamping. Therefore you have an option and that option is texture with the joints or sizes of the squares determined by you. Hopefully this will help you understand some of your options when choosing stamped concrete or textured concrete  for your project.