Microcement Flooring — Café Near Kingdom Tower Riyadh

A café opening near Kingdom Tower in Riyadh needed microcement flooring across two levels — an outdoor terrace at street level and a full interior floor upstairs. The owner had seen seamless microcement floors in European cafés and wanted the same continuous white surface flowing from outside to inside with no material change at the doorway. Porcelain tiles were ruled out early because grout lines would kill the clean unbroken look. The outdoor section made things harder — a white microcement floor sitting in direct Riyadh sun had to handle 55-degree surface temperatures in summer, sand-carrying winds, occasional rain, and daily coffee spills from customers without yellowing or lifting at the edges. Most flooring contractors the owner spoke to refused the outdoor portion entirely.

We split the microcement flooring work into two phases because indoor and outdoor demanded different preparation. Inside, we ground the concrete slab mechanically and applied two hand-troweled coats of white microcement — sanding between each coat to keep the floor dead flat across the full area. Working around the decorative column and built-in fixtures already in place was slow because every edge had to be cut clean so no restart lines showed in the finished microcement floor. The outdoor terrace was a different job entirely. We laid a flexible waterproofing membrane first — without it, the microcement flooring would crack within months from thermal expansion as Riyadh surfaces swing from 55 degrees by day to below 20 at night. Same white microcement went on top but the sealer was completely different — aliphatic polyurethane built for years of UV exposure instead of the standard interior version. We added an extra sealer coat on the terrace knowing the café staff would pressure wash it every morning and customers would drag chairs and spill drinks on it daily. The full microcement flooring across both levels — roughly 280 square metres — took 10 working days from first grind to final sealer coat.

The café now has one uninterrupted white microcement floor running from the outdoor terrace through the entrance into the full interior — no tile lines, no material breaks, no thresholds. Sunlight bouncing off the white microcement flooring through the full-height windows makes the space feel twice its actual size. The terrace has gone through a complete Riyadh summer — peak heat, dust storms, seasonal rain, daily pressure washing, and constant foot traffic — and the microcement floor shows zero cracking, zero yellowing, and zero surface wear. The café sits directly facing Kingdom Tower on one of the busiest commercial streets in the city, and the white seamless floor is the first thing people notice walking past.