A guide
Tile lasts decades. Grout doesn't.
Tile is one of the longest-lasting surfaces you can put in a house. Grout and silicone are not. Almost every tiled room that has started to look tired has a grout, silicone or sealing problem rather than a tile problem — which is the cheap half to put right, provided somebody notices before water gets behind it. Here is how to keep new tiling looking new, what each material actually needs, and the three signs that mean a phone call rather than another scrub.
01
The first fortnight
Let it cure before you use it
Adhesive and grout both need time, and cold rooms need more of it than the bag suggests. A floor tiled in the afternoon should not be walked on that evening, and a newly grouted shower wants to stay dry for as long as the manufacturer asks. Rushing the first use is the single most common way a good job gets damaged.
Leave the silicone alone
Internal corners and the joint where tile meets bath, tray or worktop are siliconed rather than grouted, because those joints move and grout cracks when it is asked to. Do not pick at it, do not scrub it in the first week, and do not fill the bath to the brim and climb in before the bead has properly skinned over.
Wipe the haze, never scour it
A fine cement haze on the tile face after grouting is normal and lifts with a damp cloth and a proprietary haze remover. A scouring pad will take the haze off and put a permanent dull patch on a polished porcelain or a marble at the same time.
02
Week to week
A squeegee beats a cleaner
Thirty seconds down the shower walls after use takes the water off before it can evaporate and leave its dissolved minerals behind. Berkshire water is hard, and limescale is the main reason shower glass and grout go cloudy — you cannot scrub off what you simply did not leave behind.
pH-neutral on everything
Bleach and acidic descalers lift the surface of cement grout and will permanently dull marble, limestone and travertine — the acid etches the stone itself, which no amount of polishing undoes. A pH-neutral tile cleaner and warm water handles porcelain, ceramic and stone alike. Anything that needs more should be chosen for the material, not for strength.
Run the extractor longer than feels necessary
The fan wants to run for a good while after the shower has stopped, not only during it. Mould on grout is a humidity problem rather than a dirt problem — it grows on moisture, and no cleaning routine fixes a room that never dries out.
03
Once a year
Re-seal the stone and the mosaic joints
Porcelain and glazed ceramic need no sealing. Natural stone — marble, limestone, slate, travertine — and unglazed terracotta do, and the sealer wears out. An annual re-seal on a stone floor or a stone mosaic is a short job that prevents a stain nobody can get out afterwards.
Check the silicone before it fails
Run an eye along the joint where the bath or tray meets the tile. Any lifting, any gap, any black speckling means it should be cut out and replaced. Silicone is a consumable: renewing it every few years is routine, and it is what stands between a splash and a ceiling repair downstairs.
Tap for a hollow tile
Knock along a tiled wall or floor with a knuckle. A well-bedded tile sounds dull; a hollow ring means the adhesive is not gripping behind it. One hollow tile is worth keeping an eye on. A patch of them, particularly in a shower, is worth a phone call.
04
By material
Marble and natural stone
Porous, softer than porcelain, and chemically vulnerable — lemon juice, limescale remover and some bathroom sprays will etch a dull mark into a polished marble in seconds. Seal it, clean it with pH-neutral products only, mop up spills rather than leaving them, and accept that stone develops a patina. That patina is most of the reason people choose it.
Porcelain and ceramic
The low-maintenance end of the range: non-porous, no sealing, and happy with a neutral cleaner. Polished porcelain is the exception — it is ground flat at the factory, which opens micropores in the surface, so it marks more easily than a matt finish and dislikes abrasives.
Mosaic and glass
Mosaic is mostly grout by surface area, so it lives or dies by how the grout is looked after. Keep it dry between uses, treat it gently, and if it is a stone mosaic, seal it with the same schedule as a stone floor. Glass mosaic will not stain, but the joints between the sheets will, and they are the first place limescale settles.
Worth a phone call
Three things that aren't a cleaning problem.
Most tired-looking tiling is cosmetic. These three aren't — they are the room telling you something is moving or letting water past, and scrubbing harder makes no difference at all.
Cracked grout in one straight line
Grout that has cracked along a continuous line — up an internal corner, or in a straight run across a floor — is telling you that something underneath is moving, not that the grout was bad. Re-grouting it will crack again in the same place. That line wants looking at.
A shower tray or floor that gives underfoot
Any flex in a tray, or a stain appearing on a ceiling below a bathroom, means water is getting past something. Caught early it is a re-seal and a mixer. Left alone it becomes a tray, a floor and a ceiling.
Grout dark only where the water lands
Grout that discolours only in the shower zone is normally mould in the surface rather than dirt on it. A mould-specific treatment and a fan that runs for longer will usually sort it. If it keeps coming back in exactly the same spot, the joint behind it may be holding water.
Something stopped looking right?
Cracked grout running in a straight line, a floor with give in it, a stone that has gone dull in one patch. Send a photograph — caught early, a lot of it is a short job rather than a room.
We're on the tools most of the day — a text or a voicemail is never ignored, and photographs of the room get you a useful answer fastest.