Both give you a bathroom without tiles or grout. Both are applied by hand, in coats and both photograph beautifully. From there they part company - one is a cement system engineered for water, the other a lime plaster that has been used in wet rooms for a thousand years - and choosing between them is mostly a question of what you want the surface to feel like and how hard it will have to work. We apply both. Here is how we help clients decide.
What each one is
Microcement is a modern cement-and-polymer coating, trowelled on in thin structural and decorative layers over a mesh and sealed with a multi-coat system. Total thickness is around 2-3 mm. It bonds to almost any sound substrate - plasterboard, screed, existing tiles - and on floors and in wet areas it works together with a waterproofing membrane beneath it. The sealer does the waterproofing; the cement gives it the strength.
Tadelakt is a lime plaster from Morocco, traditionally made with lime from around Marrakech, applied thickly, compressed and polished with a smooth stone, then treated with olive soap. The soap reacts with the lime to form a water-repellent surface, which is how it has lined hammams and cisterns for centuries. What we apply in the UK is a tadelakt-style lime finish: the same method - hand-polished lime, soap-sealed, no film-forming coating - made with limes and pigments we can source and rely on here. We say "tadelakt-style" deliberately, because the original is a regional material as well as a technique and we would rather be exact than romantic.
The look and the feel
This is where most decisions are made and the two are quite different in the hand. Microcement is cool, dense and precise. The clouding is subtle, the surface is even and it can be sealed anywhere from a soft matte to a low sheen. It reads as contemporary and architectural - the finish for a bathroom that wants to feel like a continuation of a concrete or stone floor.
Tadelakt-style lime is warmer and softer. The stone polishing gives it a gentle, slightly undulating sheen with visible movement and because the pigment is in the lime rather than on it, the colour has depth. It reads as natural, hand-made and quiet - closer to a hammam than a hotel. A client in East Sussex who chose it for a full bathroom refurbishment described the result as high-end but still warm and natural, which is about the best short summary of the material we have heard.
Water: how each one copes
Microcement is the more robust wet-area system and it is not close. Beneath the finish sits a waterproofing membrane, falls to the drain are formed in the base coats and the sealer is a tested, film-forming product with a known performance. It is the right material for a floor that gets showered on every day, for a walk-in shower and for a family bathroom that has to be forgiving. Read how a microcement bathroom is waterproofed for the detail.
Tadelakt-style lime is water-repellent rather than waterproof. The soap-and-lime surface sheds water well and has done so in steam rooms for a very long time, but it relies on the surface being intact and maintained and it does not like standing water or strong detergents. On walls, around a bath, in a shower enclosure with good ventilation it performs beautifully. As a shower floor, or anywhere water pools, it is asking for trouble - which is why the pairing we most often recommend is tadelakt-style lime on the walls and a microcement floor beneath it. You get the warmth of the lime where you see and touch it and the engineered system where the water lands.
Durability and repair
Microcement, properly sealed, is hard-wearing and tolerant of the things bathrooms do to surfaces: dropped bottles, cleaning products, children. The seal is the sacrificial layer and is refreshed every few years as a day's visit. Damage is repaired locally and blended.
Lime is softer. It will take a knock more visibly and a sharp impact can chip it. Against that, it is repairable in a way few finishes are - a damaged area can be re-polished or re-worked and the repair disappears into the movement of the surface - and it improves with age rather than wearing out. Re-soaping every year or two keeps the water repellency up. It is a material for people who like looking after things and are rewarded for it.
Where each one belongs
- Shower floors, wet-room floors, bathroom floors: microcement, every time. Sealed, slip-resistant seal, falls formed in the build-up.
- Walls in a shower or wet room: either. Microcement if the room is hard-worked or ventilation is poor; tadelakt-style lime if you want the warmth and the room is well ventilated.
- Bath surrounds, vanity walls, feature walls: tadelakt-style lime shows at its best here - plenty of hand contact, little standing water.
- Steam rooms and hammams: the natural home of the lime finish, with a microcement or stone floor.
- Kitchens, hallways, living floors: microcement. Lime is not a floor material we would put in a modern British house.
- Period and breathable buildings: lime, which lets moisture through the wall rather than trapping it. See our lime plaster system.
Cost: what moves it
We don't publish rates, because both finishes are priced on the room rather than the metre, but the drivers are worth knowing. Tadelakt-style lime is slower - more coats, longer curing between them and the stone polishing is hours of hand work per wall - so on a like-for-like wall it usually costs more than microcement. Microcement in a wet room carries the waterproofing, the falls and the testing, so a full microcement bathroom with a floor is rarely the cheaper option overall. The honest summary: a tadelakt-style wall costs more than a microcement wall; a microcement floor costs more than any wall; and the combination of the two is a premium bathroom by any measure, priced accordingly. What makes either one expensive in the wrong way is poor preparation, which is the same for both - see what actually sets the price of a floor.
Timing
A microcement bathroom typically runs a week to ten days on site including the waterproofing and sealing, with light use a day after the final seal. Tadelakt-style lime is slower to cure between coats and should be left to harden for a couple of weeks before it sees regular water; we plan the programme so the lime walls go in first and the microcement floor follows, which means the room is finished together and the lime has had its time.
How we'd help you choose
Come to the studio, or ask for panels of both. In the hand the difference is obvious within a minute: one is cool and exact, the other warm and slightly alive. Then look at how the room is used. If it is a family bathroom with a shower that runs three times a morning, we will steer you to microcement and you will be glad of it. If it is a bathroom you want to feel like a retreat, with a bath, a basin and a well-ventilated shower, the lime walls with a microcement floor is the combination we would build for ourselves.