Do dark pavers need sealing?

Begin with what a sealer does to a paver of any shade. ICPI's Tech Spec 5 says “Sealers are used for visual and functional reasons,” and its visual line is plain: “most sealers change the appearance of the paver surface by darkening it and enhancing the surface color.” The functional side is that sealers reduce the intrusion of water, stains, oils and dirt into the paver surface. Neither sentence mentions a starting color.

On a tan or light gray driveway, that darkening reads as a change of shade. On charcoal or deep brown pavers it deepens a color that already sits near the dark end, which is why owners of dark pavers ask the question at all. The glossy end of the effect has its own name in the trade, a wet look, and the flat end is called a natural look. What each sealer family does to a paver's color is answered under whether sealing makes pavers darker.

ICPI's lines about sunlight concern the sealer, not the shade of the paver. It says aromatic urethanes should contain an ultraviolet inhibitor to reduce yellowing, and that silanes and siloxanes resist most chemicals and UV degradation. Techniseal says its protectors are also ideal for giving faded pavers a new luster. None of those lines is written about how deep a paver's color is, and no paver maker, sealer maker or paving association document read for this page sorts pavers by color before deciding whether to seal them.

The one color line in the paving documents is about visibility. CMHA's Tech Spec 6, its operation and maintenance guide for interlocking concrete pavement, says “Dark colored pavers show efflorescence more than lighter colored ones.” Efflorescence is the whitish deposit that comes with curing concrete, and a white deposit shows against charcoal the way chalk shows on a blackboard.

The same guide says the appearance of efflorescence stops when the calcium hydroxide supply is exhausted, and that most paver producers add chemicals to the concrete that in most cases prevent it, although the chance of it cannot be eliminated entirely. That is a statement about how visible a haze will be on a dark driveway, not a sealing rule. Whether a sealer should go over a haze that is already there is its own question, answered under sealing over efflorescence.

Fading gets the same reading. The makers' and ICPI's fading lines are written about pavers in general, and none says a dark paver fades faster or slower than a light one, and this page does not say so either; what a sealer does about sun is covered under whether paver sealer protects against sun fading.

With color set aside, the sealing question on dark pavers is the one every concrete paver owner faces, optional in the paver documents and weighed on the same reasons for pavers of any shade, laid out under whether pavers need to be sealed at all.

Pattern does not split the question either. A charcoal paver laid in herringbone is still a concrete paver, and the documents quoted here speak about concrete pavers as a class.

How sealing follows a deep clean, and what the two sealer families do to a surface, is set out under what a paver sealer does and the two families it comes in.