Grit

Grit tells you how aggressive a diamond pad or tool is. A low number is coarse and cuts fast. A high number is fine and polishes. Concrete polishing moves up through the numbers in steps.

A supplier of concrete tools explains that lower numbers are coarse and aggressive, and higher numbers are fine and refining. Each step is meant to erase the scratch pattern left by the one before it.

That is why skipping steps backfires. The same source notes that a 400-grit pad can erase 200-grit scratches, but cannot reach the deeper scratches a 100-grit pad would have removed. Jump from 100 to 400 and those scratches stay as a permanent haze.

For owners, the practical takeaway is to ask the crew for the grit sequence in the proposal, and the final grit. The final number shapes the look. A lower finish gives a matte look, and a higher one gives more gloss.

See polished concrete for the full process, and concrete grinding for the coarse first steps.