Tips on Cleaning Ceramic Tile

Ceramic Tiles:

Ceramic tiles come as glazed and unglazed types. The glazed ceramic tiles are more popular because of many advantages like ease of cleaning, low or no maintenance and availability of unlimited varieties. These tiles can be used in kitchen and bathrooms. Unglazed tiles are used for flooring.

Problems with Ceramic Tiles:

The ceramic tiles are not free of problems. The major problem is it can easily be scratched and it can crack if wrong chemicals are used for cleaning. Once the tile is scratched, it becomes difficult to clean as dirt goes into the scratches and cracks, and it shows. The tiles cannot be easily replaces as the replacement tile would not have the same color shade and the replacement tile shows itself as an odd tile. The ceramic tiles are long lasting if not scratched or cracked.

Type of dirt on bathroom tiles: The ceramic tile can attract dirt from many sources. While the tiles themselves are easy to clean, the joints (grout) in tiles presents a bigger challenge then the tiles themselves. The problems of ceramic tiles are more severe on bathroom tiles because of the chemicals used in bathrooms. The ceramic tiles can have cleaning problems as detailed below.

Soap Scum

Scum from soap: The scum from soap can make the ceramic tile look bad. The scum comes from talc in the soap and it would be preferable to use soaps with no talc at all. However, this is not the solution to the problem.

To remove soap scum cover the area with laundry detergent and allow standing for several hours. Rub with sponge and clean with water. Resistant stains can be cleaned by scrubbing with brush. Tri-sodium phosphate is also a good solution in removing soap scum.