Microcement Pros and Cons: An Honest List

We sell this, so take the pros with the appropriate pinch of salt and pay attention to the cons. They are the ones that decide whether you are happy in two years.

The pros

No grout. Nothing to scrub, nothing to reseal, nothing to go grey in the corner of the shower. Ask anyone what they hate about their bathroom and a lot of them will say the grout before they say anything else.

It goes over what is already there. Sound tile, sound concrete. No demolition, no dumpster, no disposal, and no nasty surprise when the old floor comes up. On a renovation this is usually the largest and least predictable cost, and it disappears.

About 2 mm of buildup. Thresholds stay where they are, doors still close, appliances still fit, no transition strips between rooms.

Continuity. A floor can run from the entry through the kitchen to the living room with no break, and the same finish turns up a wall, across a bench and onto a vanity front with no trim and no change of material. Very little else does that.

It makes small rooms read bigger. A seamless surface has no repeat and no joint, so the eye has nothing to measure the room against.

Waterproof in itself — the microcement, not just the sealer over it. That is what separates it from decorative plasters that only look similar.

Repairable in place. You are not hunting for a matching tile you no longer have in the garage.

The cons

Everything underneath telegraphs. This is the big one. There is no grout line, no lippage allowance and no bed of thinset to bury a high spot. A wall that would have passed under tile can be visibly wrong under microcement. Prep is most of the work and most of the schedule, and people consistently underestimate it.

Small areas are brutally expensive per square foot. You cannot buy half a pail, so a 40 sq ft shower floor and a 100 sq ft shower surround cost exactly the same in material — $2,676 either way. That is $67 a square foot on the small one. The number only gets sensible once you are using most of what you bought.

Reinforced costs roughly double Core. And you do not get to choose: anything wet, anything outdoors and any floor that is not bare concrete needs it. Budget for the system the job actually requires, not the one you would prefer.

It is handmade. Trowelled by a person, so it moves and varies. Most people want that — it is why the finish looks the way it does. If you want dead-flat machine uniformity you want a different material and you will be disappointed by this one.

The coats are timed. They go on close together, so a room is consecutive days, not half on Saturday and the rest in a fortnight. Clear the time before you open a pail.

The sealer is not a formality. It is the last step and the one people hurry, and hurrying it is the most common way a good application ends up looking bad.

It chips. Drop something heavy on a hard mineral surface and you will mark it. It repairs, but it is not immune.

Who should choose something else

If you want a perfectly uniform surface, if your substrate is in poor condition and you are not willing to fix it properly, or if you are doing one small surface and cannot stretch the order to the whole room — tile is probably the better answer, and we would rather tell you that now.

Which system you need

Core is primer, microcement, sealer. It covers interior walls, bare concrete floors and indoor fireplaces.

Reinforced adds fiberglass mesh bedded into a structural build coat. You need it for anything wet, anything outdoors, and any floor that is not bare concrete. The mesh is what stops movement underneath reaching your finish.

Our material calculator will price your actual area so you can see the small-area problem for yourself before you commit.

Microvella ships late 2026. Join the waitlist and we will email you the day it is ready to order.

Related: What microcement costs · Shop the full system · For homeowners and DIY