Wall finish decision
Microcement Or Venetian Plaster On Your Walls
Both arrive as a hand trowelled mineral surface with no joints in it, and clients regularly ask for one while describing the other. The honest split is simple. One is a cementitious finish engineered to take water and wear, the other is a lime and marble surface built to catch light. Ask what the wall has to survive before you ask what it should look like.
What each material actually is on a wall
Those two protection lines are the whole comparison in miniature. A polyurethane sealed surface is chosen because something is going to be thrown at it. A waxed lime surface is chosen because the light hitting it matters more than the water.
Both are thin. Neither adds meaningful build to a room, and neither hides a wall that is out of plane, which is why the preparation on both is more expensive than most people expect.
- Microcement on walls
- 1.5 to 2 mm total, two thin skim passes over primer
- Venetian plaster
- 0.5 to 2 mm, two to four thin passes plus burnishing
- Microcement protection
- Two part polyurethane, two coats, plus a repellent in shower zones
- Plaster protection
- Beeswax, soap wax or a mineral sealer in wet areas
- Microcement substrates
- Plasterboard, tile backer board, existing tile, render, blockwork
- Plaster substrates
- Skimmed plasterboard, lime plaster, sealed and primed MDF panels
Cost drivers, since neither is sold by the tin
Nobody can quote either of these honestly from a square metre count alone, so it is more useful to know what moves the number. For both, the base wall has to be flat. Wall microcement is unforgiving of a bowed board because raking light shows every plane, and anything out by more than 2 mm across a metre gets floated flat first. High sheen plaster is stricter still, because a mirror finish reads any undulation as a wave.
After flatness, the drivers diverge. Microcement in a wet room carries a liquid tanking membrane with reinforcing tape at every internal angle, pipe penetration and tray junction, and that work happens before any decorative material appears. Venetian plaster carries its cost in passes and burnishing time, with a typical room running two to four days including drying.
- Substrate flattening on both, and more of it for a high polish
- Tanking and taping on microcement wet zones, priced as its own stage
- Number of passes and burnishing time on the plaster
- Sample boards made by the applicator who will do your room
- Corner and junction detailing, which is hand formed on microcement with no trims
Water, wear and the places only one of them belongs
Inside a shower enclosure the answer is not a matter of taste. Microcement is the finish specified there, over a tanked and taped substrate, sealed with polyurethane and then a penetrating repellent so water beads rather than sitting in the sheen. Even then the material is the finish and never the waterproofing, and a wall treated as though it were is how wet rooms fail behind the tile line.
Venetian plaster can go in a bathroom, on walls outside the direct shower spray, sealed with soap wax or a mineral sealer. Push it inside the enclosure and you are asking a decorative lime surface to do a job it was not built for.
Away from water the balance tips back. An entrance hall, a stairwell, a fireplace surround or a coffered ceiling is where burnished plaster earns its money, and ceilings in particular are one of the most effective places to use it.
Shower zones finished in microcement are not used for 7 days after the final coat, to let the sealer cure fully.
Living with the wall afterwards
Microcement walls have no grout lines, so there is nothing for mould to colonise, and cleaning is a neutral spray and a cloth. Damage is dealt with locally: the area is abraded, re-skimmed and blended, then the whole panel is resealed to the nearest corner so the sheen stays consistent.
Plaster repair is harder to hide. Blending a high polish invisibly is difficult, so work is usually re-done wall to wall between natural breaks. Marmorino, the stone matt member of the same family, blends far more easily than a burnished Veneziano, which is worth knowing if the wall is somewhere people brush past it.
Which one is right for you
Choose microcement if the surface is in or near water, if it needs to run continuously from wall into a worktop or across a vanity unit, or if you want the same material to carry through a floor and a shower without a change of product. Choose Venetian plaster if the wall is dry, the room is about atmosphere and reflection, and you want depth that a cementitious finish does not produce.
There is a version of this decision where the other answer wins outright. If your only interest is one dramatic hall wall and there is no water anywhere near it, microcement is the wrong recommendation and we will say so. If you are finishing a family wet room, no amount of liking the look of polished plaster makes it the correct specification inside the enclosure.
Plenty of houses use both, and that is often the most sensible outcome. Microcement through the bathrooms and the kitchen splashback, plaster on the hall and the principal bedroom wall. Both are agreed on sample boards made by the person who will apply them, looked at on the actual wall in daylight and at night before anything is committed.
Questions people ask before choosing
Let the room decide, not the photograph
Write down what the wall has to put up with, then pick. If there is water on it, microcement over a tanked substrate. If there is light on it, burnished lime plaster. Send us the room and we will tell you which one we would specify, including when it is the cheaper of the two.