Café Floor Near Kingdom Tower, Riyadh — Seamless White Microcement, Indoor + Terrace

A new café was getting ready to open right next to Kingdom Tower, in Riyadh's Olaya district. The owner wanted something specific: one smooth, seamless floor running across two levels — the outdoor terrace down at street level, and the whole café floor upstairs. He'd seen those clean, continuous white floors in cafés in Europe, and he wanted exactly that look — flowing from outside to inside, with nothing breaking it up at the doorway. Tiles were off the table from the start; the grout lines would have ruined the seamless feel. But the outdoor terrace was the hard part. A white floor sitting in full Riyadh sun has to take a beating — 55°C surface heat in summer, dusty winds, the odd rain shower, and coffee spills every single day — and still not turn yellow or peel at the edges. Honestly, most contractors he spoke to just said no to the outdoor section.

We tackled the microcement flooring in two separate stages, because indoors and outdoors needed completely different prep. Inside, we ground the concrete slab down smooth, then hand-troweled two coats of white microcement on top — sanding lightly between coats so the floor came out perfectly flat. The slow part was working around the decorative column and the built-in fixtures: every edge had to be cut clean, so you'd never spot a join in the finished floor. The terrace outside was a whole different challenge. We started with a flexible waterproofing membrane — skip that, and the floor would crack within months, because the surface in Riyadh goes from 55°C in the afternoon down to under 20°C at night. The same white microcement went on top, but this time with a much tougher sealer: an aliphatic polyurethane built to handle years of harsh UV. We added an extra coat of it outside too, since we knew the staff would be pressure-washing the terrace every morning, and customers would be dragging chairs and spilling drinks on it all day. All in all, the floor covered around 280 m² across both levels, and the whole job took 10 working days from the first grind to the final coat.