Wondering the best way to clean grout in your bathroom? Here are three common ways how to clean grout in bathrooms.
Dirty grout is something that can make flour tiles and shower tiles look old and gross fast! If you want to have clean tiles, you need to learn the best way to remove grout stains from your bathroom tiles. This cleaning method can work with all different types of grout!
Tiles are one of those things that you either love or hate, or love to hate. Many love how they look, and the added color they can bring to a space, and so on.
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But, we all know that cleaning the grout between the tiles can be a royal pain in the butt.
Cleaning grout is often a very time intensive activity, especially if you have tiny tiles and lots of them.
In our current apartment, we are blessed to have large tiles and only in our bathroom showers. But, like most tiles and grout, it’s gotten yellow, dirty, and even moldy in a few spots.
Even though we recently removed mold from our shower caulking, the grout was still an eyesore as well. (Check out my black mold in showers post if you have mold in the grout, walls, drains, ceilings, or shower curtains.)
I searched around looking for some easy and effective ways to clean tile grout and tried a few out in my own bathroom.
How to Clean Grout with Baking Soda and Vinegar
I am a huge fan of natural cleaning products, and love the famous cleaning duo of baking soda and vinegar. I found a few different methods of applying the vinegar and baking soda to the grout, somewhat depending if the tile is on your floor or on your walls.
As I was cleaning shower wall tile grout, I figured the easiest way to clean it is the following:
Materials Need to Clean Grout with Baking Soda and Vinegar
- Baking Sdoda
- Water
- Dish
- Vinegar in a spray bottle (or Four Monks Cleaning Vinegar)
- Grout brush
How to Clean Dirty Shower Grout with Baking Soda and Vinegar
1. Spray your grout very well with the vinegar. Let it sit for 5 minutes.
2. Make a baking soda and water paste in a small dish.
3. Dip your grout brush into the baking soda paste and scrub it into the grout lines.
4. Spray once again with vinegar, then rinse with warm water.
5. Dry.
Vinegar is a natural disinfectant so it’s a great product to use when cleaning grout. And the baking soda works well on the grout lines. This was very easy to do, and fairly fast too.
For an added boost, Elyse recommend adding hydrogen peroxide to the baking soda instead of vinegar, Amanda suggested adding in Dawn Dish Soap, Stephanie added lemon juice to her DIY grout cleaner recipe, and Melissa used vinegar, baking soda, hydrogen peroxide and borax to clean her grout!
How to Clean Grout with a Magic Eraser
Not as economical as baking soda and vinegar or as natural, Mr. Clean Magic Eraser are still a great product to use to remove dirt and grime in a variety of areas in your home, including your grout!
Materials Needed to Clean Grout with a Magic Eraser
How to Clean Grout with Mr. Clean Magic Eraser
1. Wet the Magic Eraser according to product directions, or wetting it and then wringing out most of the moisture.
2. Scrub the tile and grout with the Magic Eraser.
3. Keep going until you get all the grout clean.
4. Rinse with water and dry.
This can be a fast way to clean the bathroom walls and make quick work of stubborn stains. I don’t know if it would work for the most stubborn stains, but it’s a great way to get into the lines of the grout and those hard to reach places. I like using this on the shower walls because it’s a bit easier to do.
This method worked, though wasn’t necessarily easier than the above method, and can make your fingers sore after a while. However, it did work and did a pretty good job, though I think following up with the scrub brush would still be a great idea.
How to Clean Grout with a Steam Cleaner
Nothing is more natural and affordable than water in your cleaning! A steam cleaner naturally sanitizes and cleans a variety of surfaces, including grout!
Materials Needed to Use a Steam Cleaner to Clean Grout
Instructions on How to Use a Steam Cleaner for Cleaning Grout
1. Make sure your steam cleaner is plugged in, filled with water, turned on, and the water is hot and ready for cleaning before proceeding.
2. Attach a nylon utility brush to the end of the handle nozzle.
3. Apply the brush to the grout lines while pressing the trigger of the steam cleaner at the same time.
4. Once the grout is all clean, dry with a microfiber cloth.
I really like that this method uses both a cleaning agent (steam) and the scrub action (nylon brush tip) at the same time, and that I only need to have water…. and a steam cleaning machine. I did find that my hands get very tired holding the steam cleaner handle after a while, especially with the constant squeezing of the trigger. But, the results are pretty great and overall it’s fairly quick too! I use this awesome Dupray Steam Cleaner, but less expensive one steam cleaners (like this one) will work great too.
After you’ve cleaned your grout, be sure to use a grout sealer to help prevent it from getting dirty and grimy again!
Other Ways to Clean Grout
There were a few other ideas out there on the best way to clean grout that I thought looked promising, that I wanted to mention as well.
Bleach and Baking Soda
Jessi likes to combine bleach with baking soda and scrub it in the grout lines. However, this seems very messy and bleach is very harsh. You’d want to be very careful about splashing any on yourself or your clothes while doing this method, and to use proper ventilation and protection for your skin. I don’t think this method is really necessary unless your grout is very bad or very moldy, but I would start with one of my above methods first to see if they’ll do the job before jumping to using bleach.
Clorox Toilet Bowl Cleaner with Bleach
Over on HolidaySparkle, she used some Clorox Toilet Bowl Cleaner with bleach to clean her grout. She simply squeezes it out along the grout lines (on her floor), scrubbed it in, and then cleaned it up. I do think this would work better on floor grout than on wall grout, especially with thicker grout lines (my shower grout lines are very thin). But, again, as this product contains bleach you need to be careful while handling it, and you don’t want it to splash on your clothes and ruin them.
Oxygen Bleach
There are many different types of Oxygen bleach out there, and it is a much safer alternative to regular bleach. You can pick up some OxiClean, Clorox Oxi Magic, or Biokleen Oxygen Bleach Plus and follow the package instructions on how to mix it to make the proper solution for cleaning grout.
No matter where you fall on the love scale with tile, at least now you know several great ways to clean between those beautiful tiles and clean grout!
Once you find the best grout cleaning option, you’re not going to have any trouble getting out those tough stains. A little elbow grease will do the trick and make the cleaning process much easier!
What do you think is the best way to clean grout?
For more tips on how to clean, especially in your bathroom, check out these awesome cleaning tutorials:
- How to clean a bathtub the easy way
- How to clean a bathtub with Bar Keepers Friend
- How to clean shower heads
- How to remove hard water stains from windows
- How to remove black mold in your shower caulking
- How to clean porcelain sinks
- How to remove rust stains from porcelain sinks
- How to shine bathroom faucets
- How to clean a curling iron
Steve Buckshire says
Thanks for all these ideas, Katelyn! Another grout cleaning method, although not the cheapest, is to call a company that specializes in tile & grout such as Chem-Dry!
CPH Cleaners says
Such a helpful tips!!
Lisa Becerra says
This is a great method to clean our bathroom properly. You put really very helpful information. I am commenting to congratulate the writer for coming up with such a creative headings for all the 3 methods. In short, all the 3 methods are just
perfect about toilet bowl cleaner.
Sarah Kite says
Magic erasers are miracle workers! Thanks for sharing your tips!
DAVID SHONFELD says
these cleaning idea are good but….. it is too much work for 100sqf you need about 2 hours for 8″ x8″ tiles and up to 6 hours on mosaic .
if you have a larger area you need material that do most of the work for you and including an electric rotating brush it will take about 30 min for mosaic.
David
Katelyn Fagan says
Yes. I agree. These methods are less than ideal for very large areas as they are more labor and time intensive.
Sarah says
This a great DIY, thank you! I usually get my tile and grout cleaned once a year by a local tile cleaner, but we moved away and I haven’t found another cleaner yet. So, I used this solution on our bathroom grout and it worked incredibly well. It took a little bit of elbow grease to get it done, but the results were worth it!
Blake Lockwood says
I don’t agree.
While using a magic eraser is definitely the best of the 3 ideas, I think the Mr. Clean version is not as good at cleaning grout compared to Eraser Daddy. It’s made by the same inventor of Scrub Daddy, and their products have been very effective for me when cleaning my bathroom.