Sand sitting on top of your artificial grass after rain, and why it should not be there

Properly finished turf has infill sitting below the tips of the fibers, invisible from a normal standing view. Two things put it on top instead. If a lawn was over-filled during install or a top-up, or if infill was added and never worked in with a brush, it sits high in the pile from day one rather than settling below the tips, and it just looks worse wet because damp infill is darker and reads as a visible film rather than blending with dry, upright fibers. On a yard with any grade to it, rain also carries loose infill on the surface downhill, so a corner or a low edge collects a visible drift of sand that came from somewhere else in the yard, which is the same migration covered on our infill washing out page, just caught before it left the lawn entirely.

Let the yard dry, then walk it. An even, all-over dusting that looks the same everywhere points to over-filling or infill that was never brushed in. A drift concentrated at one low corner, along one fence line, or against one edge, with the rest of the yard looking normal, points to migration on a slope. Kneel at a spot that looks affected and check whether the fiber tips stand up above the sand, which is correct, or whether the sand comes up to or over the tips, which is not.

An all-over excess is worked down with a power brush against the grain, which drives loose infill between the fibers where it belongs; a genuinely over-filled lawn, which is rarer and usually traces back to the original install, may need some infill removed rather than just redistributed. A drift at a low point is simply brushed and raked back across the thin area it came from so the yard reads even again, the same infill redistribution used for washout, paired with power brushing to set it. Neither case calls for adding fresh infill on top of what is already there.

Brush the yard periodically, and plan on it after any hard rain in the wet months from June through September. Resist the urge to add more infill when you see a bit of sand on top; check the depth first, because the usual cause is distribution, not shortage. And if a low corner keeps collecting a drift every time it rains, that is worth mentioning on your next visit, because a slope with no edge restraint at the bottom will keep doing this until that is addressed, not just brushed away.