ᐅ Removing sand from paving stones

Hello everyone, I have a question that seems easy to answer but actually isn’t that simple. Last year we paved everything and then brushed yellow sand into the joints for compaction. We had the sand left over from the house construction. Now the stones look like they were freshly blasted from a quarry. I have cleaned them once with a pressure washer and swept them ten times. No change. Even using the full jet on the pressure washer doesn’t completely clean the stones. Scrubbing doesn’t make much of a difference either. Even a surface cleaner attachment on the pressure washer doesn’t help. The stones no longer look like the original ones; they are much lighter and just dirty.

What do you recommend to remove the sand but without damaging the stone too much?
I keep thinking about a cement film remover, but isn’t that quite aggressive?

I don’t see anything there; those are just stones, and naturally they get dirty. Yours are clean, after all.

You won’t change that anymore, so get used to how it looks.
And throw away the catalog with the enhanced picture and erase that image from your mind as well.
The paving stones now get dirty faster, thanks to the pressure washer.

You are outside in real life, not in a catalog – I don’t see anything there either! What do you do when there are leaves lying around?

Say goodbye to the glossy images. You can sweep in small gravel; the sand will settle eventually. However, the stones will discolor over time anyway.

No need to panic; I’m not imagining things. I know exactly how the stones looked when they were installed. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be asking here. Attached are two photos that clearly show the situation. A picture often says more than a thousand words.

You can see one of our stones and the same type at the neighbor’s place. It’s clear that theirs is cleaner and darker.
The difference is even more obvious and clear at the edge by our lawn.
The colors were identical before!