While fresh white grout and clean tiles can look stunning when first installed in your home, grout often becomes discolored and even moldy over time. No matter how much cleaning or mopping you do on your tiled surfaces, you can never seem to get them quite as bright and shining as they were before. While getting your grout and tiles perfectly clean again can be difficult, here we have compiled some of the most popular and effective methods of tile and grout cleaning.
Homemade Cleaning Solutions
Natural and homemade cleaning solutions like vinegar and baking soda are popular choices for routine cleaning of your tiles and grout. Combining a paste of baking soda and applying it to your grout, then spraying vinegar over your tiles can create an effervescent cleaner that lifts minor stains. A combination of hydrogen peroxide and baking soda applied to grout, then washed off with dish soap can help to remove minor discoloration and bring the whiteness back to your tiles. While these homemade treatments are not so invasive, they can often fail to lift the deeper stains and stronger discolorations, and more intense grout cleaning methods need to be sought.
Chemical Solutions
There are a range of commercial chemical-based solutions on the market that claim to deep clean grout or bleach grout to return it to its original color. While these commercial solutions can be occasionally effective, they can also end up damaging tiles and surfaces in the bathroom kitchen where they’re used. Try to review all cleaning solution choices with your local tile flooring professional before using on your floors.
Bleach
As a method to remove heavy duty stains and mold from grout, bleach is often turned to as the ‘sledgehammer’ option to conquer even the toughest stains. Bleaches can include oxygen bleach, chlorine bleach and undiluted hydrogen peroxide. While strong bleaches may seem effective, they can actually weaken and destroy grout more quickly, causing grout to crack or crumble away. If you have mold in your grout, bleaching will only remove the color of the mold, and won’t actually get rid of the mold itself, making it appear as though you’ve solved the problem when you’ve really only covered it up. Bleach is best used only extremely sparingly and diluted on problem areas when it comes to tiles and grout.
Scrubbing
While scrubbing is touted as a popular and chemical free way to remove stains and mold, what is actually happening when you scrub your grout is that you’re wearing away the uppermost layers of the grout. This can weaken your grout over time and is once again best used only sparingly.
Professional Cleaning
Professional tile and grout cleaning remains the gold standard for getting your tiles and grout clean and white again. Professional tile cleaning using a combination of gentle yet effective deep steam cleaning, targeted cleaning solutions and expert techniques, to help make your tiles and grout shine again, with minimal damage to your surfaces.
While getting your tiles and grout back to pristine condition can be a challenge, professional tile and grout cleaning can bring new life to your tiled floors. Maintain the effectiveness of professional tile and grout cleaning with regular routine maintenance using safe cleaners and gentle techniques to maintain strong and clean grout
