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Why painting tiles is worth a proper try

Retiling a bathroom means days of dust, chiselling and a bill that runs into four figures. Painting over tiles, by contrast, can transform a tired room in a weekend for the price of a tin, a roller and some decent masking tape. Specialist tile paint is made to grip glazed ceramic and porcelain where ordinary emulsion simply slides off, and modern versions come in satin, eggshell and gloss finishes that cope with steam and splashing.

It is not a magic trick, though. Tile paint is a coating, not a glaze, and it lives or dies on preparation. Skimp on cleaning and sanding and you will be picking flakes off the wall within a few months. Do the job properly and a good tile paint will last five years or more.

It helps to know where tile paint belongs. It performs well on wall tiles, splashbacks, boxing and the tiles around a bath. It is a poor choice for floor tiles, which take grit and foot traffic, and for shower trays and baths, which flex and are usually better replaced. Cracked or hollow-sounding tiles will still look cracked under paint, so replace those first.

Setting up the room and your kit

Bathrooms are awkward spaces for painting, so give yourself room to work. Clear the walls, remove the mirror and shelves, and run the extractor fan or open a window. Tile paint is far smellier than emulsion, and a warm, well-ventilated room dries more evenly.

• Mask off the bath, shower tray, basin, taps and any adjacent painted walls with low-tack tape.
• Remove old silicone where it meets the tiles you are painting. Paint will not stick to silicone, and new sealant will not stick to fresh paint unless you reapply it afterwards.
• Gather your tools: sugar soap or a bathroom degreaser, a scouring sponge, 240-grit wet-and-dry paper or a fine abrasive pad, a 2-inch angled brush, a foam gloss roller, a small brush for grout lines, and a tack cloth.

Work in sections if the room is large. Painting one wall at a time lets you keep the rest of the bathroom usable while the paint cures.

Cleaning: the step that decides everything

Paint bonds to the surface it is given. Give it soap scum, shampoo residue and limescale, and it will bond to those instead — which is to say, not for long.

Wash every tile with a warm sugar soap solution or a dedicated bathroom degreaser, working along the grout lines where grime collects. In hard water areas, treat limescale with a proprietary remover and rinse thoroughly. Any black mould in the grout should be killed with a fungicidal wash and allowed to dry completely before you go near it with paint.

Then rinse, and rinse again with clean water. Detergent left on the surface is a common cause of patchy adhesion. Leave the room to dry for a full 24 hours — tiles hold moisture in the grout long after the surface feels dry to the touch.

Keying the surface and priming

Glazed tiles are deliberately smooth, and that is the enemy of paint. Sand every tile lightly with 240-grit paper or a fine abrasive pad. You are not trying to scratch through the glaze, just to dull the shine so the paint has something to bite on. Work in circles over the whole surface, paying attention to edges and corners, then wipe away every trace of dust with a damp cloth followed by a tack cloth.

Check the tin before you buy. Some tile paints are self-priming, while others benefit from a dedicated tile primer, particularly in wet zones or over very glossy tiles. If your paint is self-priming, a thinned first coat does the same job. Let the primer cure for the time stated on the tin — usually at least four hours.

Painting in thin coats

Stir the paint thoroughly rather than shaking it, which traps air bubbles. If you are using a two-part epoxy tile paint, mix only what you can use within its pot life, and mix it in small batches.

• Cut in first with the angled brush along the ceiling line, corners, tap fittings and the top and bottom edges of the tiled area.
• Use the small brush to push paint into the grout lines, then roll the flat areas with the foam roller in overlapping criss-cross passes.
• Lay off with a single light stroke in one direction to flatten the stipple.
• Resist the urge to over-brush. If the paint begins to drag, leave it and deal with it on the next coat.

Thin coats are everything. Two or three thin coats look far better than one thick one, which will sag, dry unevenly and flake. Respect the recoat time on the tin — often 16 to 24 hours for epoxy products. Keep the room at around 18–20°C while each coat dries.

Peel the masking tape away while the final coat is still slightly tacky, pulling it back on itself at a low angle. That gives you a clean edge instead of a ragged one.

Curing and looking after the finish

A painted bathroom is not finished when the last coat goes on. Tile paint needs several days to cure properly, and epoxy products can take a week. Keep the enclosure dry for at least five to seven days — no showers, no splashing, no mopping the walls.

Once cured, reapply a good quality silicone sealant around the bath and shower tray. Then treat the surface kindly. Clean with mild soapy water or a gentle bathroom spray and a soft cloth. Avoid cream cleaners, scouring pads and heavily bleached products, all of which will dull the finish or lift the edges. Touch up any chips promptly, and deal with cracks at corners and along the grout line with a flexible filler, since movement there is what eventually breaks the seal.

Look after it and your painted tiles will quietly outlast the trend that prompted them.