Cleaning Effectively At Home

Posted on: 18 December 2019

Tile inside your home gives you the durability to last a long time and look great, especially under high-traffic conditions. Tile can be installed in a variety of colors, patterns, and materials, making it an easy way to add the right look to your home's interior decor. However, it is essential to keep up with your tile to make sure it looks great year after year. Here are some tile maintenance recommendations to help you keep your tile floors looking their best.

Select the Right Tile

When you have the opportunity to choose the tile for your home floor, consider the effect the type of tile will have on your lifestyle. For example, white tile can show dirt and spills easily, which can require you to clean it more often. And if you choose a high-shine tile, it will need to be mopped and dried to prevent water stains from appearing.

You also get to select the color of grout that is installed between your tiles. Keep in mind that white grout might look great and set off your tiles perfectly, but it can show dirt and grime easily and will need to be kept cleaned with professional or DIY treatments. You might want to consider a gray, brown, or black grout that matches or complements your tile but still reduces staining.

Seal the Grout

If you already have a light-colored grout installed around your tiles, you may not be able to replace it with a darker color, but you can keep it clean by treating it with a sealant. A grout seal will protect your grout and its appearance by repelling water, food stains, and dirt. 

There are grout sealing kits you can buy and apply easily yourself, or you can hire a tile professional or a grout cleaning service to handle the sealing. Keep in mind that if you seal your grout, you will need to have new sealant reapplied every year or two to keep up the protection.

Complete Regular Cleaning

It is great to have sealed tile and grout, but if you don't yet and you need to clean your grout before you seal it, be sure to complete it in the proper manner. It is recommended to clean your grout once a year or every other year, depending on the amount of foot traffic in your home and the color of your grout. For example, if you have a dog in your home that goes outside periodically to do their business, your tile grout is going to accumulate more dirt over the high traffic areas from the dirt their paws track in.. 

Professional grout cleaning or a tile cleaning service is a good option to remove all the stains from your floor fully and efficiently. It can be time consuming and labor intensive to take on this task yourself, especially if your home contains a large amount of tile.