ArcaMax

What would you say if I told you your driveway doesn’t need to be boring blacktop or ho-hum gray concrete? Can you envision a red, orange, green or light khaki color driveway? Would you like a driveway that provides maximum traction in snow and ice? I used to have a driveway like this and loved it. I’m talking about a chip seal or tar and chip surface.

A rural road in my New Hampshire town was repaved recently using the chip seal method. The contractor sprayed about one-half gallon of hot liquid asphalt per square yard on the old road surface. A special spreading machine then carefully dropped about 25 pounds of small stone chips per square yard onto the hot, gooey asphalt cement. A large roller then compacted the chips into the liquid tar.

A paving contractor in Cincinnati used to specialize in this paving alternative. They purchased stunning medium-brown flint chips scooped from the Wisconsin River in central Wisconsin. This stone looks similar to butterscotch candy you might use when baking cookies. The stones were tumbled in the riverbed, and the rough edges were nice and smooth.

I used this material and paving method for my own driveway. People walking past my house would always stop and look at it. I’d answer their questions about it if I happened to be outdoors doing yard work. I loved being the spokesman for this unique and colorful pavement. You can watch a video of my tar and chip driveway on my www.AsktheBuilder.com website.

You can embed any stones you like in the liquid asphalt. You may live close to a gravel pit that has uniquely colored stones. Granites and marbles come in a vast variety of colors. A stunning red granite can be found on Mt. Desert Island in Maine. Imagine if a local quarry had a pile of small chips of this granite!

The chip seal method of paving is time-tested. It was the way many miles of roads were paved in the early 1900s. Thousands of miles of secondary roads are still paved this way today. Chip seal is quite common out West, where the distances from blacktop mixing plants are too far away from where the material will be used. Chip seal contractors just have to keep the liquid asphalt hot in special heated tanker trucks. This is easy to do.

Modern blacktop paving differs from chip seal in a few ways. Your blacktop driveway material is a mixture of small stones, sand, and the same asphalt cement. It’s blended together in a giant rotating drum. The sand and stones get completely coated with the asphalt cement, which, when cooled down, binds the aggregates together.

No sand is used in a chip seal pavement. The chip seal stones don’t get completely coated with the asphalt cement, allowing the color of the chips to be on display. The underside of the stones is bonded to the sticky asphalt cement. The bond is permanent. Snow, ice and snowplows can’t easily pluck the stones from the asphalt.

The chip seal surface is not for everyone. I’d not recommend it if you play basketball on your driveway. The surface is not as smooth as concrete or blacktop. Chip seal is also unforgiving when it comes to toddlers’ skinned knees.

Your best bet at locating chip seal contractors is to call all the blacktop companies in your area. They’re the ones who deal with asphalt cement on a daily basis. The question is whether or not they have the truck that sprays the asphalt and the stone-spreading machine.

Let’s say you don’t want the chip seal surface, but you do want a colored driveway. Blacktop sealers are available in a variety of colors. These sealers are used by companies that maintain tennis and pickleball courts. There’s no reason why you can’t use these same bright colors on your driveway.

Your dingy, plain-vanilla concrete drive can be transformed to a stunning art piece by installing a thin cement stucco coating. You can add countless dry-shake pigments to the stucco just as stamped concrete contractors colorize regular concrete.

If you really want a challenge, you can do intricate stucco patterns on your driveway, much like terrazzo contractors create murals using different colored marble chips and the dry-shake pigments in the cement.

There are many videos on YouTube showing how to colorize concrete or stucco. I urge you to watch them. Experiment using cheap concrete paving blocks you can buy at a home center. Once you’ve perfected your technique, then advance to coating your driveway. I’d love to see photos of your completed project.

Subscribe to Tim’s FREE newsletter at AsktheBuilder.com. Tim offers phone coaching calls if you get stuck during a DIY job. Go here: go.askthebuilder.com/coaching

©2025 Tim Carter. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.