Cement render

[1] Depending on the 'look' required, rendering can be fine or coarse, textured or smooth, natural or colored, pigmented or painted.

The cement rendering of brick, concrete and mud houses has been used for centuries to improve the appearance (and sometimes weather resistance) of exterior walls.

For large areas, vertical battens are fixed to the wall every 1 to 1.5 meters, to keep the render flat and even.

Some have a polymer additive added to the traditional cement, lime and sand mix for enhanced water resistance, flexibility and adhesion.

There are stipple, glistening finishes, and those with enhanced water resistance and antifungal properties.

As acrylics are synthetic polymers, they do not break down by natural weathering the same way that a cement, sand, and lime mixture will, and so will persist in the natural environment for much longer as synthetic chemical compounds that have unknown long-term effects on ecosystems.

Synthetic polymers such as acrylic are manufactured from chemical feedstocks such as acetone, hydrogen cyanide, ethylene, isobutylene, and other petroleum derivatives.

The polymer products cannot be fully recycled (using present technology or any that can be confidently expected to be developed), so new raw materials, taken from the finite and diminishing supply of raw natural resources, must always be put into their manufacture, making the process unsustainable.

Traditional cement-based render does not have these problems, making it an arguably better choice in many cases, despite its working limitations.