Hayman Park
Concrete Etching and Stencilling, Manukau City

Public realm surfaces face a harder test than most concrete, with constant foot traffic, weather and years of wear all working against whatever finish is applied. At Hayman Park in Manukau City, Auckland, By Design Concrete & Paving needed an architectural stencil design built into the concrete in a way that would hold up to that exposure without relying on a coating that would eventually need repainting.

BlastOff carried out the work through concrete stencilling, precisely masking the architect’s design onto the concrete before sandblasting the pattern in to a consistent depth. Working the blasting evenly across the masked area produced crisp contrast between the smooth, untouched concrete and the textured, blasted pattern, and because the same process that creates that contrast also roughens the surface, the finished stencil doubles as a slip-resistant treatment for pedestrians moving through the park.

The result is a design that requires no repainting and will not fade or delaminate the way an applied coating eventually does, since the pattern is now simply part of the concrete.

For councils, landscape architects and developers planning similar public realm work, this project illustrates why stencilling into the substrate is often the more durable choice over painted line marking or applied graphics in high-traffic outdoor areas. Getting a comparable result depends on accurate masking, consistent blasting depth across the full design, and confirming with a trial area how the exposed texture will read in different light before committing to the full scope, so both the visual design and the safety benefit come through as intended. Coordinating the stencilling with the concrete contractor’s own programme also matters, since joints, repairs and surface variation elsewhere on site can interfere with how a large-scale pattern ultimately reads.