i had a very experienced tile guy, after interviewing a bunch, try to clean my two year old grout and reseal it. A week later it looked the same. I wonder what the original guy used silicone or latex and what the other guy put on top of it or tried to clean off... i'm now back to square one. I tried the oxy clean today which didn't work at all... :(

I have the latex silicone type grout in my shower, not " real" grout....and that is what I am having a heck of a time keeping clean. I have tried oxyclean, toothpaste with peroxide and baking soda which at least smells good, hydrogen peroxide, and assorted cleaning products from grocery store. Even if I rip it out and start again, I don't know how to make sure it stays clean.

Hi clay born pottery..........i mislead you, toorhpaste works on regular grout but not silicone. Silicone is one of those treasured things that must be removed once it starts to mildew and redone. Regular mildew sprays might be a good choice to clean silicone until it stops working because the silicone is beyond help. I have had to replace yearly at homes where the shower and tub are combined. They do make mildew resistant caulks. Silicone as far as i know is a caulk not a grout but they may have come out with one they call a grout....i dont buy much silicone now because the shower is seperate and acrylic surrounded by tile. I love a pretty tile shower but i must say this acrylic jobby is easy breezy to clean. I actually took off my glass shower door though when we purchased because it was grungy. I replaced with a pique pristene white curtain to give a spa look with fluffy white towels. Those metal glass doors are mildew collectors as far as i am concerned and i must keep molds and mildews down being allergic and asthmatic. Lowes has a nice selection of spray mildew cleaners. Wear a masque though..that stuff has to be bad for the lungs.

Thanks! I was using the terms caulk and grout incorrectly and interchangeably. So NOW my question is: if I rip out the old caulk, would it be better to replace with actual grout instead of another silicone caulking product.? I got the caulk they say is mildew resistant, but apparently not resistant enough.

My husband is a can do guy....he knows everything about everything and is so handy. I have learned from him for the past 27 years by osmosis literally. Anyway, are you taking about the area where the tub and tile meet? Generally i have not seen cement grout in that area in modern day. I thought i knew why but wanted to verify with hubby so i did. Porcelin or acrylic tubs and tile do not get sealed with grout. Houses always have some degree of movement in the ...contraction and expansion. Grout will crack and water will seep and cause issues in that area. Caulk being easily removed and replaced is done in that area. Unfortunately there is no such thing as permanent caulk. One of the joys of home ownership is replacing caulk as needed usually once a year or more in very wet humid areas. Drying the area with a towel may reduce the frequency depending......the same is true of baseboards and crown molding in a house....movement in colder or hotter weather is possible between joints. Our house for example has a walkin crawl space, an outside temp and a controlled inside temp. The crawl space has a $1700 dehumidifier and stays around 55 degrees year round.....the inside temp controlled around 70......the outside depending can go as low as 0 in winter to 100 in the sun in the summer. We get a war going between all the various temps and movement however slight is caused by contraction and expansion due to these variations. Caulk must be replaced from time to time...no area is immune. You have a choice...do it yourself or hire a handyman once a year. Personally, i would like to win a big lottery and be a job creator and hire people now that i am becoming over the hill....i took pride in doing stuff myself when younger because of my perfectionism trait.....my husband and i know if we do it , it will be done right. However, that said...who is sitting on the floor scrubbing the grout with a toothbrush these days............yup.....old me......you cant imagine the contortions i do getting up and down......OMG!

Because the grout on the kitchen counter tile wasn't in great shape and looked awful I got a toothbrush and some bleach (diluted with water) and scrubbed it clean. Then I resealed it. Did the same upstairs although more water less bleach to clean. For my shower I use the following recipe: 1/2 cup of water, 1/2 cup of white vinegar, and 1/2 cup of dawn. In that order put in a spray bottle. When I'm almost done showering I spray the glass doors and walls so that by the time I finish I can squeegee all of the surfaces and they're soap scum free. I use the same mixture to clean the counters in my kitchen as well as the sink. I have hard water here unfortunately and it leads to certain things needing periodic remove-replace-reseal; I've gotten really good at applying the new caulk around the tub and sink fixtures plus where the shower door frame meets the tub and the walls.

Lyme away is great on hard water build up too. I tried an experiment last night...i used strong commercial grout cleaner on my tile floor in a section and arm and hammer toothpaste on another section. Guess which worked best? Toothpaste!

Horrible nasty job no matter how you do it. However, if like me, you are doing a new area, I highly recommend the colored grout. I have just done a large area in my new kitchen with white subway tile and charcoal grout. OMG, it's gorgeous!!!

Colored grout looks great, but it isn't a good substitute for not cleaning. ;-)

Be extra careful about which cleaners you use on colored grout. Strong bathroom and mold/mildew cleaners should be used with extreme caution and only after testing in an inconspicuous location (read the label carefully and/or look up the manufacturer's detailed info on their website). It appears they are only meant for white grout. Many of them say in the fine print to not use on colored grout. They may cause the color to fade, right away or over time.

The technical support line for the Tec brand Power Grout I used (Birch - a light tan color) said to regularly remove residues with a 1:10 solution of a high pH cleaner (at least 9.0 pH) such as Simple Green, applied with a sponge to one wall at a time for 3 minutes, then rinsed off thoroughly before moving on to the next wall. He said if I do that *before* I ever see mold, there won't be any soap scum, shower/hair products to feed mold and mildew.

After that conversation with tech support, I didn't have any Simple Green in the house, but I did have baking soda (pH is exactly 9.0) so I made a paste and applied that to the grout with an old toothbrush. The grout already looked clean before I cleaned it, so it was hard to say if it removed scum/residue or not. The baking paste and a blue Scotch scrub pad did do a superb job removing soap scum from the bottom surface of the bath tub, though, leaving it very smooth and shiny, so it does appear to do the job.

Since I have silicone caulk not grout, I think my only recourse is to rip it out and redo it. Is it true that you can ONLY use grout on ceramic tile and not in a fiberglass shower?

My husband and I bought the tile we desired, along with Bostik grout, for our last tile project: tiled entry way, hallways, and main batroom. We used Bostik due to always scrubbing grout in other areas of our home. It's wonderful!!! NO SEALING!!

Do suggest hiring a professional who knows how to work with Bostik grout.

We have since sold our home and have moved. We are renting at this time. For our current place of abode prior to cleaning the tub I put a strip of Soft & Scrub along the grout, let it sit for about 10-20 minutes then scrub it off with a sponge.

An extra tip for keeping shower glass doors clean and clear of soap scum. It's kind of a pain but-after each shower wipe down the shower door and all metal (framing) and any base (tile, or ?) step. Once a week I clean the shower door with a glass cleaner and then I clean it with RainX. Needless to say, the water runs off of the glass and any residue is so greatly reduce.

Clay Born Pottery,

You won't want to use grout in a fiberglass shower. Grout isn't flexible and will crack. You need the flexible seal that caulk will provide.

That's what I thought....so it looks like I will just be ripping out the nasty caulk and doing it again. Thanks for confirming my hunch.

Teri Davis your are not leaving the OxiClean on the grout long enough to do its job. I have never had to scrub mine. Plus if you use hot water and a strong mix of OxiClean it penetrates the grout well. I leave it on for about 30 minutes or more and it lifts the stains off.

Yikes all this talk about cleaning grout has made me want to do mine again. LOL

Part of the reason why people have to scrub so much is they just are not patient enough to let these products do the work. They spray and want to just immediately wipe it off.

On impulse, squirted toilet bowl cleaner onto stained grout on bathroom floor. Left it 10 minutes, scrubbed and rinsed. Worked great; not sure about using on larger scale. Give me a cheap fiberglass shower stall any day!

My husband and I purchased Folex. Even though the bottle says it's a carpet cleaner, it is marked for cleaning other surfaces. It's a non-toxic, water based, non-ionic surfactant. The least expensive price we found was at a local Lowe's. I will also state that this was used on a carpet stain that would constantly attract dirt after cleaning with other cleaners. After using Folex on that stain it has not reappeared.

For additional product info, and a list of retailers by location, you can check out folexcompany.com. I've linked a photo of how well it worked on colored grout in kitchen using only a grout brush, a little elbow grease and Folex (top half of photo shows uncleaned and bottom half cleaned).

Folex on colored grout

(sorry, I'm on a borrowed computer and could not get my photo to upload)

Leigh Stevenson - your photo came through just fine.

Folex is the best product ever for wall-to-wall carpeting; I never would have thought to try Folex on grout, but I'm not surprised you had good results.

Thanks for sharing.

Like Anne Duke, I do not let it get dirty.

Wipe and dry walls down after every single shower. It takes only a couple of minutes, but the savings in terms of the time it takes to scrub down the walls and money spent on caustic cleaners is well worth the few minutes it takes to dry the shower after each use.

My bathroom was 20 years old when I recently sold my house, and the real estate person said it looks like they finished the job last week.

okramar, if you need to wear a mask, then it's a sign that it is something chemical and not good for you or the environment..I would be very careful with that

I use Colgate Optic White toothpaste on my kitchen floor grout. Wet the grout, brush in the toothpaste, let sit a few minutes, scrub off & rinse. Voila! I've tried just about all the other products listed here with poor results. I discovered the toothpaste method a few years ago & it's all I use now. Smells good, too.

We have horrible calcium and magnesium deposits that build up on the grout, so I use lime-away and bleach and then reseal. It's not fun.

I live in France, in the country side where the water is quite hard. It is quite humid here so the bathroom gets a real workout. Top that off with the bathroom having a quite large walk-in shower that is 6 feet by 8 feet. The entire bathroom is covered with these large porcelain tiles which are textured with with engraved swirls. (You can see a hint of the texturing between the butterfly tiles and the shower caddie.) Of course the swirls catch the water and soaps.

I clean it every time I shower. I use simple lemon juice that I have filtered through a coffee filter. I have placed it in a spray bottle so I can mist the tiles after I have showered but not yet left the shower. I rinse it off with the shower wand. But once a week I use Bar Keeper's Friend bathroom spray cleaner More and a micro-fiber cloth. I also don't use much as Bar Keeper's Friend bathroom spray More costs me just a bit over $12 here. A spray bottle generally lasts me about 4-5 months. There is also an Italian soaking tub so that is, as are the sinks, cleaned in the same way. We've lived here nearly 3 years now and take showers daily and I just took this pic to show you. I don't use a squeegee because it don't work on the etched surfaces not the upraised surface of silver gray accent towel.

I switched to lemon juice only because the shower is so large that cleaning products from the store choke me when I used them. Since I had used lemon juice to clean what apparently was the accumulation of years of scale off of the glass shower we had in a rental home we lived in before buying this one I am comfortable using it here. But, honestly, cleaning the bath once a week is a very unpleasant chore. It takes just a few minutes to go over it daily and thus there is never an hour spent in bathroom unless it is for grooming.

@ nashvilleave ~ 1 quart of distilled water and 1 tablespoon of Woolite. I also used a toothbrush wrapped in a microfiber cloth. Whatever you do, don't use anything with acid in it.

I see a lot of posts on never let it get dirty, but the original post was how to clean grout. I would love to know something that is natural, not toxic or powerful chemicals which i don't use in my bathroom or home, and can work on colored grout. I have a slight off white grout which i'm learning from this thread needs special consideration in cleaning.

iwantitplease -

If you know your colored grout's manufacturer, I recommend contacting the technical support department for their cleaning product recommendation.

Keep in mind that cleaning product formulations change all the time, so manufacturers may be reluctant to suggest a specific product by name. But they should be able to suggest a specific characteristic to look for or avoid. For instance, my colored grout manufacturer said to use an alkaline product with a pH of at least 9.0 and to avoid acidic products because they etch and weaken cement-based grout (in an earlier comment on this thread, I shared info from the TEC company about cleaning the colored TEC Power Grout that we used during a recent bath remodel).

If cleaning product labels don't provide the pH (or whatever characteristic the grout manufacturer recommends or advises against), then contact the cleaning product manufacturer.

If you are using a product "off-label" to clean your grout such as toothpaste or Woolite (as some commenters suggested), find out if it satisfies the grout manufacturer's advice about pH or other characteristics, too.

If you don't know your colored grout's manufacturer, then make a good guess - contact several manufacturers of colored grout products and find out what they recommend for their products. Since most grouts are cement based, I'm guessing recommendations will be more similar than different.

If your grout is old (or maybe not very old, but perhaps abused in the past with harsh acidic cleaners or not a stain resistant formula) and the stains are so resistant to removal that you feel like Sisyphys in your cleaning efforts, maybe consider removing the grout and regrouting with a stain-resistant grout?

However, as I am learning with our newly remodeled bathroom, even stain-resistant grout formulas perform better when squeegeed or even wiped dry after using the shower/bath, and scum/personal care product residues should be removed frequently. Waiting until grunge and stains appear always makes the cleaning task more arduous. It has taken a long time for this resistant old dog (me) to accept that trick, lol.

I will try that, though I have caulk, not grout.

Joan Radocchio - below the last comment look for the slim box with the words "Click to switch off notifications about new comments>" .

Thank you, Joan!

GoGlow liquid dish soap mixed with water works GREAT! Less than a $2.00 fix.

I've tried everything...baking soda, hydrogen peroxide, Oxyclean, vinegar. What works the best for me is Zap. I find it at Walgreens. I have white grout and this bleaches it back to it's original brightness. It may be too strong for colored grout.

Such a common question/dilemma. I'll offer a PRO perspective (and understand this does not address the DYI question, which is legitimate, so move on if this isn't relevant for you). We have many clients who have us do annual maintenance for their tile and stone work. Yes, an expense to have a real experienced craftsman do this, but these clients want it done right and they want to preserve the original work. I might add that we do not offer this service to people who we have not done work for. We don't have the time for this sort of project, but it is an added value for our customers. And our customers know that they will be on a "list", which will result in a call when we have a "window". Generally the work is a few hours. For larger and multiple areas, it may be several days. We do a professional clean, may re-caulk, and of course re-seal those materials which require regular re-seal. Way too much info. to offer here. We are currently putting together a comprehensive chart for our clients of recommended products as the many materials used today result in various maintenance needs. And, a point we would like to make is PLEASE be careful as natural stone can be very damaged by many products used for man made materials. In other words, marble, granite, travertine, etc, cannot come in contact with the same chemicals which could be safe for ceramic or porcelain. When we have our "chart" complete, I will post it. We have some tried and true products, some commercial, but others available to the public. And yes, ventilation (fans and leave doors and shower curtains open), routine wipe downs, NO acidic products around natural stone. Sorry so long but this is our business, and this is one reason our customers hire very experienced professionals. Loved the creative approaches many have shared (just hoping they are only used around man-made materials)!

Oh, and I should mention, so many dilemmas we read about here have to do with substandard work, complaints, etc. Would it make a difference if you established a positive relationship with your tile contractor and they were willing to come back and "service" the work that they performed? If they didn't stand behind their work would they want to come back in one, two, five, ten years to perform maintenance?

This is my method for cleaning grout lines.

First, wipe down the grout with hot water to remove surface dirt and grime. Next, spray a cleaning solution on the grout. You can mix your own by putting a 50-50 mix of vinegar and water into a spray bottle. Spray on the grout, let stand for five minutes and then scrub with a soft brush.

DragonFly Tile and Stoneworks, I would be very interested in the cleaning chart you were working on if it is available yet.

Margaret, wiping with a towel at the end is the best way

Caulk is difficult to clean. Grout is easier. Rip the caulk out, you can get caulk softener to make it easier. There are plastic tools for pulling it out so you don't scratch the tile. Clean it, let it dry. Use a nice new caulk, DAP brand perhaps. The newer caulks are more resistant to mildew. We dry our shower everytime we use it. I rarely use cleaners, baking soda or Bonami when I do. The caulk has lasted almost 20 years I just re-did it. The off-white grout in the master bath has practically no stains. The new grouts have sealer made in. Are very durable. That shower in France is beautiful!

I wear old clothes, then I use liquid dishwasher detergent and a toothbrush. By the way your tile design is beautiful.

Clay Born Pottery, I think we need a photo to understand just what you are cleaning.

I use soft scrub and a sponge type of dish cloth that I keep just for the glass and tile shower. Rinse clean and use white vinegar and dry with a soft rag till it shines. Once or twice a week. Daily I wipe glass and tiles with a soft dry rag after showers. That daily drying is the key. I also spray soft scrub with bleach on the shower floor along the tile baseboard. That is one area where silicon starts to separate. The bleach takes that little black line that appears away. That I do once a month.

I wouldn't use bleach..it's toxic and it doesn't really help.