What Is Microcement Made Of?
Binder, aggregate, and the layers — not just cement

What is microcement made of? The three core ingredients

Strip any microcement down and you find the same three building blocks:

• A resin binder — the polymer that glues the mineral particles together, bonds the coat to the surface below, and defines which type of microcement you have. This is the single most important ingredient.
• Fine mineral aggregate — controlled-grain mineral powder that gives the coat its body, its hardness, and the fine texture you can burnish smooth.
• Mineral pigment — added for color, either pre-blended or dosed on site.

Those are mixed into a workable paste and troweled on in thin coats. On a floor the decorative microcement sits on top of a separate cementitious base coat, and the whole build is bonded with a primer below and protected by a topcoat above. So the honest answer to "what is it made of" is really two answers: what the decorative coat itself contains, and what the full installed system is built from. I will cover both.

Is microcement just cement?

No — and this is the most common misunderstanding. The name suggests a micro-thin cement, but a thin skim of ordinary cement would be brittle and would crack the moment the surface beneath it moved. What makes microcement work is the resin. The polymer binder gives a 2–3 mm coat enough flexibility and adhesion to be applied over tile, drywall, concrete, or an existing floor and stay intact.

In some families the binder is paired with Portland cement; in a polyurethane-mineral system, the decorative coat's binder is a polyurethane resin, and the cement-based material is kept in a separate structural base coat underneath. Same category word, very different recipe.

What binders are microcement made with?

There are three binder chemistries on the market, and the binder is what you are really choosing between. They are all "microcement," but they are made of different resins:

• Acrylic-cement — an acrylic (or styrene-acrylic) polymer blended with Portland cement and fine sand. The entry-level family: affordable and water-based, but more rigid and heavily dependent on its sealer for protection.
• Epoxy-modified — built on an epoxy resin. Hard and chemical-resistant, which is why it appears in industrial settings, but rigid and prone to ambering (a yellow shift) under UV light.
• Polyurethane-mineral — a modified polyurethane resin carrying the mineral aggregate. Hard-elastic rather than just hard: it resists abrasion while still flexing with the substrate, and it is UV-stable. This is the premium tier, and it is what ATRIA makes.

You can identify which one you are looking at from a single line on the Technical Data Sheet — the "Chemical Nature" or base line — without taking anyone's word for it.

What is the mineral aggregate in microcement?

The aggregate is the mineral body of the material — the part that gives a cured coat its hardness and the velvety, stone-like texture. In ATRIA's SuperTitanium BC decorative coat that aggregate is a controlled blend of quartz, marble sand, and Etna volcanic mineral:

• Quartz — one of the hardest common minerals; it does the heavy lifting on abrasion and scratch resistance.
• Marble sand — a fine, workable mineral that lets the coat be troweled thin and burnished to a smooth, seamless surface.
• Etna volcanic mineral — adds density and mechanical interlock, helping the coat key together into a dense, closed-pore film.

Grain size is held within a controlled range so the finish stays thin, smooth, and consistent batch to batch.

What is ATRIA microcement made of, layer by layer?

A finished ATRIA PURO surface is not one material but a short stack, each layer made of something different and doing a specific job:

• Primer (Atriafloor Primer or Primerquarz) — bonds the system to the substrate and regulates absorption.
• Cementitious base (Atriafloor Rasante One) — the structural, cement-based layer where it is needed, rated 42 ± 2 MPa compressive strength at 28 days (EN 1015-11). This is the part of the system that is genuinely "cement."
• Decorative coat (SuperTitanium BC) — the microcement you actually see: a two-component modified polyurethane resin in aqueous emulsion, blended with quartz, marble sand, and Etna volcanic mineral. It cures hard-elastic and closed-pore, with Shore D hardness above 65.
• Topcoat (New Atriapol Antibacterial) — a two-component polyurethane sealer, non-yellowing and UV-resistant, tested to ISO 22196:2011. In wet areas the system is built over a code-compliant waterproofing layer first; the coating itself is not the waterproofing membrane.

That layered makeup is also where our distinction lies: ATRIA carries polyurethane in the SuperTitanium BC decorative layer itself — not only in the topcoat — over a documented 42 ± 2 MPa cementitious base and under a 2K-polyurethane antibacterial topcoat. No microcement system we have verified, TDS in hand, combines all three; ask any supplier to show you the same, layer by layer, in their own data sheet.

How to check what a microcement is made of

You never have to guess. Ask the supplier for the current Technical Data Sheet and read four things:

• The binder — the "Chemical Nature" or base line. It should name polyurethane, epoxy, or acrylic for the decorative coat, not just the sealer.
• The aggregate — a complete sheet describes a controlled-grain mineral content.
• The topcoat chemistry — and whether it is specified UV-stable and non-yellowing.
• Mechanical data with standards — hardness, adhesion, and abrasion figures, each with a test method (e.g. EN 1015-11, EN 1542, ISO 22196:2011).

If a manufacturer cannot tell you what the decorative coat is made of from its own documents, that is your answer. A premium polyurethane-mineral system publishes every layer.