Concrete Walkway Design
See how this concrete walkway design is adjacent to raised garden beds and a bocce ball court in a side yard.
A video transcript featuring Joseph Huettl, Huettl Landscape Architecture
On this project, part of the design involved a grid of concrete pavers, which we have both on the front driveway as well as in the path down this side yard. In this path, we have at least a 3-foot by 3-foot square paver size. In association with that, at the vegetable garden area, you have 3-foot by 3-foot rusted steel vegetable boxes, which play off of the path.
Creating a sandwash finish
For these concrete paths, these squares, we used what we call a sandwash finish. Some people might call it a light wash finish, and it basically involves curing the concrete with a steel-trowel finish up to the point where it's fairly hardened, and then washing it off at the end to the point where all you reveal is the lightest sand grains. If you do it too early you're going to get a grainier texture and a less smooth finish, but this just provides enough friction that it's non-slip. It lets the concrete be concrete. It's not trying to imitate something else as you would with, say, stamped concrete, and so it's an honest concrete.
Usually we integrate an integral color. In this case the color is winter beige, which is one of the most neutral colors you can get. It's nearly gray. It just warms up the concrete a little bit, so it keeps it from being just plain concrete, and we like this finish a lot.
