Stain Protection Coating for Marble

The duration of PROTEX water and stain repellent treatment varies due to several factors, making it difficult to predict exactly how long the protective effect will last. Factors such as foot traffic, wear and tear, and the material's absorption all impact the longevity of the treatment.

Typically, surfaces treated optimally maintain their protective properties for about 2 to 2.5 years. However, it’s important to reapply the product as soon as you notice a decrease in protection, such as the surface beginning to absorb water or stain. This reapplication will renew the protective effect.

Stain Repellent treatments are liquid formulations used to provide natural stones (or other absorbent materials) with water and oil repellent features. It means that the stone will repel (and not absorb) water (and water-based substances) and oil (and oil-based substances).

What is important to understand is that the stone will not “repel” the stain endlessly. If you leave coffee on a stone for 24 hours, even if it is treated with the best product on the market, sooner or later the stain will get absorbed and the stone will be stained. The stain-repellent treatments are meant to be applied to give to the user the time to clean the stone from the staining agents before they get absorbed into the surface. The time before the stains goes into the stone depends on many different topics and features (the quality of the formulation, the type of the stone, the finish of the stone etc).

The difference between water-based and oil-based substances is quite easy. Staining agents such as coffee, tea, soft drinks… are all water-based. Staining agents such as food oil, engine oil, greasy food, greasy sauces, those are all oil-based.

Each stain repellent treatment is composed by two main elements:

1. The active principles, which are the proprietary chemical raw materials that provide the water and oil repellent features to the stone.
2. The transporter, which is the liquid used to “bring” the active principle inside the stone. It can be water (for all the water-based products) or solvent (for all the solvent based products). Among the solvents, there are many different types used in this industry.

Basically the active principles are dissolved into the transporter. The role of the transporter is to get absorbed (together with the dissolved active principles) by the stone. The drying process allows the transporter to get dry and evaporate, leaving on the stone only the active principles. From this moment (when the transporter has gone away) the active principles start providing the protective features.

As you can imagine, each product from each different brand differentiates itself from the other according to the balance of the formulation and the type of transporter and active principle used in the formulation. There are various different products, different formulations and at different price points.

The main benefits of water-based products are:

• You can apply on the surface even if it is with some humidity inside. The solvent- based instead you can not apply if the stone is humid, because the water (humidity) inside the stone will avoid the solvent product to correctly penetrate inside the stone.
• Water is a “bigger” molecule compared to the solvent, so if you have a rough stone or a very absorbent stone, with a water-based product you can “fill” the porosity much better compared to a solvent product. With a solvent, in this case , you will need too much product to have the same result because being the solvent molecules “smaller”, they will get absorbed by the surface very very quickly and too deeply to leave the active principle only on the surface, where they actually needs to stain to provide the right protective features.

On the other hand, a water-based product required a longer drying time compared to a solvent one. This is because the water drying time depends on the room temperature, while the solvent-based are more volatile so they dry quicker than water.

PROTEX is a solvent-based product which you can consider like a mid-way between a water-based (big molecules and slow drying) and a NANOTECHNOLOGY based-product (small molecules and quick drying). It is a solvent-based product that is basically good for both compact and absorbent surfaces.