Hey everyone! I’m popping in to share a much-asked-for update on whether the painted tile floor in our bathroom hlasted. It’s been several years now since I painted the ugly red tile floors in our powder room (you can see the “before” and “after” pics and details of how I painted our floor tile {HERE}) so I figured it was time for a follow-up post. Overall, I am VERY happy with how our painted tile floors held up. Here’s a pic of our powder room floor today: (this post includes some affiliate links – see my full disclosure statement {here})
Looking good right?! Let’s zoom on in so I can show you in detail how they’ve worn. The most heavily trafficked areas of this bathroom (which is used daily by my husband since our master bath is super tiny) are the area where you walk in, in front of the sink, and in front of the toilet. The first two areas look pretty much untouched – here’s a close-up of the tile in front of the sink:
I was initially having issues with getting the painted tile totally clean in these high traffic areas but then realized that a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser (you can find them {here}) does the job beautifully. So much so that I was kind of appalled at how dirty the magic eraser was the first time I tried it on my “clean” floors. So on a weekly basis I do a quick cleaning of the floor with warm water and mild soap but once every month or two I pull out the Magic Erasers and go to town on the grime.
The area in front of the toilet is the one area that has shown some wear with several small scrapes on one of the tiles and some teeny little marks on a few others that you’d only see if you were looking for them (like on the upper right of this pic):
I’m pretty sure I know how the scrapes happened – we had someone who was mulching our yard ask to use the bathroom and I’m guessing that he had a stone in his work boots because that’s the day I first noticed the scrapes. Some of the teeny marks are likely just wear and tear – everyone who worked on our never-ending kitchen remodel used this bathroom so it’s gotten a LOT of use.
So would I still recommend painting your tile floor? Absolutely! Overall they’ve worn really well and touching them up was pretty quick and easy. I sanded out the scratches in front of the toilet and then put two more coats of porch paint on the entire floor and the whole space looked good as new. So if you paint your tile and don’t use a top coat, plan on re-coating it every couple of years to keep it looking perfect. If you don’t want to have to recoat that frequently or have floors that are going to be extremely trafficked, consider putting a coat or two of water-based polyurethane over your last coat of paint when you do your project.
You can find all of the steps and products I used for painting my tile floors in {this post}. And for all the details on our stenciling see my post on wall stencils.
XOXO,
