what color did you go with?

Colored concrete always lightens up. How much it lightens depends on how many lbs of color were added. But it won't lighten up overnight. Over time, if it doesn't lighten to where you want it, consider staining it, rather than ripping it out.

when life gives you a lemon, make lemonade.

We ended up going with sandstone which we thought would be the lightest color of beige. The color now looks like medium brown. Our contractor wants us to give it more time to lighten but my questions is how long is long enough? My husband insists that even a shade lighter will not be the look that he wanted. We are trying to keep it in perspective that with all the problems that people have in the world, this is not the worst thing. However, when we work so hard to pay for a pool that is costing us plenty, we don't want to have to be unhappy with the look everytime we're in our yard.

Our contractor has stated that there is no exact science to concrete but he seemed so unsure of himself when mixing the color that it made me wonder if he really knows his stuff. After thinking about it, I wondered if the color of the sand he was adding to the mix affected the color. It was a very brown looking sand as opposed to grayish or white.

Sand color will definitely make some difference, but it is the ammount of color added that makes the biggest difference. When our mason laid our flagstone, he had a chart and asked us to pick the grout color and level of darkness that we wanted. There were color samples at 5lb, 2lb and 1lb of coloring agent with brown sand and then 2lb and 1lb for white sand. The white sand based color samples were significantly lighter (not sure how to quantify a difference in lightness for you but as I recall it was maybe 10/20% lighter, with the biggest impact being on the smallest amount of coloring agent).

Have you considered acid washing it? That really lightened up our deck.

Just a few days ago...
Thats not enough time for concrete to cure and show its "final" color. They should be able to give you a better assessment on what they think the color will end up (if they are experienced enough). Depending on your climate and soil and substrate, it could take months. When they poured ours we thought we made a BIG mistake - looked like wet, greenish elephant dung - but once it cured we loved it. Due to other issues not related to color, we ended up sandblasting our colored salt finish and that lightened it up even more (removed the concrete's "creme" layer).

When life gives you lemons, add VODKA!

Thanks for all the helpful info. It has been a little over a week and it definitely has lightened to where we can live with it but may consider acid washing or sandblasting since it's still not exactly what we wanted. Is it too late to acid wash and how much will the color change? Can sandblasting be done to pool coping? Our pool guy says he tried it before and the coping edge detail began to crumble due to the pockets of air under the cream layer. I wonder if they can just to a light sandblast to it without damaging it.

Next week will bring another stress as they will be pouring the concrete patio area! Although we have already planned to sandblast that to get a nice even color and finish.

Charlie 123, we're living paralell lives... what do you think of starting a support group??? ...Oh, I guess that's what this forum is; right????
I just wrote an illustrative book 2 min. ago on this forum regarding the same issue. (there have been others as well, but not like this one) Too upset to look up others here in the same boat. Been grieving for 2 days, I look out my window and try to think like Tagprod.
Tagprod - been there done that not wotking over it. We're in the anger phase now.
Jimbars - Asked God to forgive me then took your advice.
I'm waiting to be advised mode now.

I liked jimbars advice better.