Painting grout on a tile countertop is not too difficult for most DIY homeowners.  It is important to properly clean and prep the grout to ensure a good good adhesion with the grout colorant.  Following the proper grout painting steps below will enable you to restore you dirty, dingy, damaged grout to like new condition.

 

 

Painting grout with a is a great way to restore a clean even appearance to even the most stained and damaged grout.  In no time at all you can restore your grout to make your entire countertop look like new or even better than new condition.  Painting the grout with a grout colorant will seal the grout much better than any type of clear sealer can. 

When you paint your grout the grout will become extremely easy to clean and maintain.  The dirt and stains will sit on top of the painted grout and will not be absorbed by the porous grout.  Countertops get lots of use and wear and the grout can become dirty and stained in a short period of time.  This makes a tile countertop a great place to paint the grout with a grout colorant.

 

 

 

 

The first thing that you need to do before painting your grout is to make sure your grout is as clean as possible.  Grout paints should only be applied to grout in not porous ceramic or porcelain tile installations.  It is important to thoroughly clean your grout with an alkaline and then an acidic tile and grout cleaner before you apply the grout colorant.  You want to make sure that the grout colorant will properly adhere the grout.  Thoroughly cleaning the grout properly will ensure that the grout colorant properly adheres to the grout.  To read more information about cleaning grout with an alkaline and acidic cleaner you can go to our grout cleaning page.

After you have cleaned your grout and let the grout dry for a few hours then you can begin painting your grout.  You should tape up all areas around your countertop that you do not want to get the grout colorant on including all the walls, baseboards and any faucets and fixtures on the countertop.  The simplest way to paint the grout is to just use an ordinary small bristle toothbrush and use it to paint the grout lines.  Try to paint only the grout lines and not the tiles but it is ok to get the grout paint on the tiles since this excess grout paint will be cleaned up off of the tiles later.

For this countertop Aqua Mix white grout colorant was used.  Aqua Mix white is actually less white than the Aqua Mix pure white grout colorant and will not look dirty as quick as the Aqua Mix pure white grout colorant.

 

 

 

After you have painted a section of the grout then you need to wipe off the excess grout colorant with a damp chamois cloth.   You can use all sides of the chamois before you have to rinse the excess grout colorant out of the chamois.  You should have a bucket of warm water ready to rinse the chamois after it gets dirty with the grout colorant.   Do not attempt to paint too much of an area before you clean the excess off of the tile surfaces.  You do not want the grout colorant to dry on the surface of the tiles before wiping it off with the damp chamois.

 

 

 

After you have wiped down the excess grout colorant from the countertops tile surfaces then you should let the grout colorant dry on the grout.  It will usually take about 1 hour for the grout colorant paint to dry on the grout.  You should see some haze develop on the tile surface from the grout paint.  This is normal.  After the grout paint has dried on the grout then you can go and clean up the haze from the tile surfaces with a totally clean and damp chamois.

You should then go over the tile surfaces with a clean dry towel or for smaller areas you can use paper towels.  Make sure that you wipe the tile surface while it is still slightly damp from the damp chamois to remove all remaining traces of the grout paint from the tile countertops surfaces.

After you are done painting the grout then you should let the it dry for 24 hours before you use the countertop.  You should wait at least 48 hours before you get any water or spills on the painted grout.  After that you can begin to enjoy your new looking countertop with brand new looking, easy to clean and maintain painted grout.

 

Painting grout on a countertop can be a difficult and laborious task especially if there are large areas of grout that need to be painted.  Even with the proper techniques it can still take a long time to complete and not look as good as you wanted.  You may want to hire a professional tile and grout cleaning and restoration contractor to clean your tile and grout and paint your grout for you. 

You can read some valuable information and tips on how to hire a tile, grout and stone cleaning and restoration contractor at our contractor information page here. Tile Cleaning Service.