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How to Clean, Refresh, and Seal Your Grout (Easily and Cheaply!)

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It’s easier than you think to clean your grout. With this tutorial, you can not only clean your grout but seal it to prevent stains too!

Before and after pictures of cleaning grout

Next month will mark one year since we moved into our new construction home. When we were in the building process and went to the flooring supplier to pick our finishes I distinctly remember them telling us that they would not be sealing our grout.

Fast forward to the holidays and when the baby caused $5000 worth of water damage to the house by flushing a roll of toilet paper. Yeah, I was really wishing I had sealed that grout once the flooding permanently stained it.

Luckily the insurance company paid for the restoration and the tile specialist introduced me to this awesome stuff called Grout Refresh. I decided this past week that it was time to tackle the boy’s bathrooms because as you can see above..little boy lack of, ummmm, aim, has made their tile pretty cringe-worthy!

grout Refresh and q-tips

Supplies

  • Gloves
  • Sponge
  • Dish Soap and/or mild cleaner such as Soft Scrub
  • Grout Refresh – I got my Grout Refresh for less than $15 and one bottle was more than enough to cover two standard full bathrooms.
  • Toothbrush/utility brush/cotton swabs – I used Q-tips to apply my Grout Refresh but you can use a toothbrush or gloved hand just as easily.

Clean the Grout

It’s important to thoroughly clean the grout before you seal it so you don’t lock the yuck in!

  1. Mix dish soap and hot water and apply to the grout with a toothbrush. Let it sit 10-15 minutes.
  2. Brush the grout with a toothbrush and use a sponge and clean water to remove all of the soap mixture.
  3. If it doesn’t come clean consider a gentle cleaner like Soft Scrub.
tile with grout refresh

Seal Grout

  1. Simply cover all the grout with the Grout Refresh-no need to be super neat-it won’t hurt to get it on the tile. The instructions tell you to wait 30-60 minutes after application and spritz with water. I can personally vouch that if you get busy with life and forget about it for, oh, 24 hours or so-that’s just fine!
  2. Spritz the grout with water and then wait five minutes.
  3. Scrub off the excess with a sponge. The Grout Refresh will easily clean off the tile while leaving the grout looking good-as-new! The actual labor time for each bathroom was less than an hour.
  4. Let the floors dry completely before walking on them.

And here is the difference again:

Before and after pictures of cleaning grout

Isn’t it a huge (and totally less cringe-worthy) result? I wish I would have done it as soon as we moved in but I had no idea it would be so easy and so inexpensive!

Tips for best results

  • don’t rush, it can be tedious but it is worth it in the end
  • wear gloves to protect your hands
  • use a gardener’s knee pad or folded towel to protect your knees
  • sealers don’t last forever, plan on resealing floor grout every 3-4 years, less for shower grout

Have you sealed your grout? Anybody else have the same “little boy” issues I do? Bleh!

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94 Comments

  1. I’m glad you had a good experience with this product, but I have used it and didn’t have the same type of experience. I found the product rubbery, with a tendency to peel off the grouted areas when I tried to remove the excess from the edges of the tiles. I used Grout Refresh to change the dark brown grout on my tiled foyer floor to an off-white when Menards was out of off-white in a brand I used in the past. The Grout Refresh has been on my floor for about 3 months now and there are areas were it is wearing or peeling away. The other kind (I don’t remember the brand name but it comes in a bottle that looks like liquid shoe polish) I used in the past on a bathroom floor (about 18 months ago) hasn’t had that problem; in fact, I used it to change icky yellow-colored grout on my backsplash to white 25 years ago and it is still holding up. I think the difference is the liquid-polish dispenser type grout renewer actually soaks into the grout where the Refresh product stimply sits on top of it.

    1. Hi Rebecca,

      Thanks for sharing your experience. I have to wonder what the difference is though, because I haven’t had any of those problems-the grout that the insurance contractors repaired and sealed with the Grout Refresh is four months post-sealing and I haven’t had any peeling at all. Is there a chance your grout was already sealed and that’s why it’s peeling up? Or wasn’t totally clean before using it? I did have it not adhere to one area where I had not cleaned it thoroughly enough prior to application but once I cleaned that area and reapplied it was fine. Or perhaps it comes from trying to change the color of the grout with the product? (I only matched it to my grout original color, not try to change the entire color of the grout.) Just brainstorming here as I haven’t had those problems. I’m sorry your experience wasn’t as good as mine, I hope you find a good solution!

      Take care, Melissa

  2. Visiting from HOH. OMG I can’t wait to try this, this weekend! our grout looks horrible and I’ve been trying to figure out a way to clean it without having to scrub for days every month! thanks for sharing!

  3. Thanks for the great tips!! My downstairs bathroom is a mess around the toilet because of the boys! I’ve tried everything including bleach and still cant get the stains out. I will definitely be trying this! Thanks!

  4. girl, i can’t even tell you how badly i need to do this in our kitchen. apparently the grout they make now-a-days doesn’t need this, but thats not what we have. lol! thanks for sharing!

  5. Wow, I can’t believe how easy it is to get such an clean, pretty result! HUGE difference!

  6. I am so headed to Lowes to pick some of this up this week! Thanks so much for sharing this with us!

    Take care,

    Trish

  7. Thank you for this. I don’t have little boy, yuck anymore. Just old dog, didn’t quite make it outside, yuck. I can’t wait to have clean grout.

  8. Thanks for the idea! I need to do this to the tile around our fireplace asap!!!!
    Selene @ restorationbeauty.com

  9. CRAZY! I’ve been looking everywhere for something like this! I’m going to go for it… our grout is NASTY!!!

  10. Thanks for including my tip in this post! I’ll have to check out that grout cleaner, I’ve never heard of it before. 🙂

    Anna
    askannamoseley.com

  11. Wow, that’s amazing!! I never knew there was a product like that! Thank you for sharing!! 🙂

  12. This sounds much easier than scrubbing with a jumbo box of Magic Erasers, which is what I did to clean the grout in one of our bathrooms. Thanks for the tip!

  13. I used a very similar product on my kitchen counter tile last summer and it still looks great. Amazing how easy it is too!

  14. That’s amazing!!! We did tile in our last house and I never sealed it and it got dirty and I just scrubbed it and lived with it. Where were you then to tell me how easy it could be refreshed?

  15. I need to do this and what a great post! Have never heard of this before!! I’m wondering where to buy it as well…I’m guessing any of the home improvement stores? Wow, thanks for sharing this! Happy Wednesday and am pinning this gem for sure!

  16. That is great advice! I need to do this in our kids’ bathroom (for the same reasons, minus the flood!). Where did you buy it? Can I just get it at HD or Lowe’s?

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