Exposed Aggregate Driveways in Toronto: What They Cost and How They Wear

The slab is poured like any other. Before the surface has hardened fully, the top layer of cement paste is removed, either by washing it off or by using a surface retarder that stops it setting while the concrete below it does. What is left is the stone from the mix, standing slightly proud of the surface.

Toronto Concrete Repairs describes it in exactly those terms: the surface cement is washed back to reveal the natural stone aggregate beneath, creating a textured, slip-resistant finish with a distinctive appearance.

Two things follow, and they are the reasons people choose it. The texture gives grip that a smooth trowelled surface does not, which matters on a sloped Toronto driveway in February. And the visible surface is stone rather than a pattern pressed into the top, so there is no pattern to wear through.

Three Canadian sources publish a figure, and they land close enough together to be useful. Contract Link prices exposed aggregate at $18 to $28 per square foot installed in Ontario, describing it as a durable, decorative, textured surface.

Toronto Concrete Repairs' own driveway table is specific to the GTA and gives both a rate and a project total. Exposed aggregate is $20 per square foot, or $8,000 to $10,000 for a typical double-car driveway. The same table prices a standard broom finish, the ridged surface left by dragging a broom across the wet concrete, at $15 per square foot and $6,000 to $7,500, and stamped concrete at $25 per square foot and $10,000 to $12,500.

Nice Guy Concrete works from a 600 square foot residential driveway and gives a much wider band: $6,600 to $19,200 for exposed aggregate, against $5,500 to $9,000 for plain concrete, $7,200 to $15,000 for coloured and $10,800 to $30,000 for stamped on the same footprint. Their page attributes the spread across all its finishes to the finish type, the site conditions and your location. It does not single out any one driver, and neither does this guide.

Read together, exposed aggregate costs roughly a third more per square foot than a broom finish and meaningfully less than stamped. The concrete driveway cost guide carries the full sourced table, and the driveway cost calculator applies the rates to a specific size.

Exposed aggregate is concrete, so it faces the same winter as any other concrete driveway: freeze-thaw cycles multiplied by de-icing salt, working on the pore structure at the surface.

One difference is worth naming, and it is cosmetic. On a smooth finish, a spalled patch, an area where the top layer has flaked away, reads as damage immediately. On a pebbled surface the same small amount of wear is simply less visible. That is a fact about what you notice, not a claim about which finish lasts longer, and neither cited page compares the two on durability.

On the sealing schedule itself the sources disagree, and neither of them treats exposed aggregate as a special case: both give one interval for a concrete driveway. Toronto Concrete Repairs' comparison table lists concrete driveway maintenance as sealing every four to five years, and its porch repair page recommends resealing every two to three. Green Building Canada calls sealing optional but commonly recommended in cold climates every five to ten years, and prices professional application at $1 to $2 per square foot against $0.50 to $0.75 per square foot for materials on a DIY job.

The same table from Toronto Concrete Repairs puts a concrete driveway's lifespan at 30 to 50 years and rates its salt resistance as good when sealed, against poor for asphalt and fair for interlocking. Our concrete against interlocking comparison sets those trade-offs out properly.

Exposed aggregate is a finishing skill with a short window. The wash-back has to happen at the right moment in the cure: too early and stone comes away with the paste, too late and paste is left over the stone. That description is ConcreteFinder's own, not a figure from any page cited here. That judgement is built by doing it often, which is why experience with this specific finish is worth asking about separately from general concrete experience.

The difficulty is that it is invisible in this directory, and in the category schemes of the ones we checked. ConcreteFinder sorts 770 GTA concrete companies into eight categories and exposed aggregate is not one of them. The 137 companies listed under concrete driveways include everyone who pours a driveway in any finish at all. The nearest thing to a decorative-finish filter the data supports is the 29 companies under stamped and decorative concrete, and that is a different finish.

So this is a case where the directory narrows the field and the questions finish the job. Our guide on finding a stamped concrete specialist works through the same problem for the neighbouring finish, and the approach transfers directly.

It is a good fit where grip matters and a pattern would look wrong. A sloped driveway, a walkway beside a pool, or a front approach on an older house where stamped concrete pretending to be flagstone would read as a costume.

It is a worse fit where the budget is tight. The gap to a broom finish is real money on a full driveway. And a broom finish over a properly prepared base will generally outlast a decorative finish over a poor one, because base preparation is where the durability lives whatever is on top. That is ConcreteFinder's own view rather than a figure from any page here.

If the decision is still open, price two finishes from the same contractors rather than one from each. Keep the scope identical apart from the finish. That makes the comparison honest, and it tends to surface who actually does this finish regularly.