These 3 Affordable Products Made My Vintage Tile Look Jaw-Droppingly New

If your bathroom or home has darkened grout or dingy tile, this easy and powerful grout cleaner may give everything a fresh new look.

Do you ever use a cleaning product that leads to such dramatic, jaw-dropping results that you could kick yourself for not taking before and after photos? That’s the spiral of feelings I’m living in right now. I cannot believe what just happened in my bathroom.

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A few years ago I moved into a 1960s-era condo that, while very well-kept, hasn’t seen many updates beyond the installation of “Florida rental property tile” floor in the living area. My kitchen is a hilarious wood-patterned formica I find charming in its own way, and I thought my little square bathroom tiles were a chic blue-gray — until recently, when I bought a highly reviewed grout cleaner on a whim and discovered that my bathroom tile is actually a bright light blue.

Now I can’t stop telling people about Zep grout cleaner and brightener and the all-but-miraculous cleaning transformation it performed before my very eyes. Thankfully, there are some pretty dramatic before-and-after photos, as well as a video from a user below, so you can imagine my similar results. I regularly mopped that bathroom floor, and it wasn’t what you’d call dirty. It’s just that the Zep revealed that even well-kept floors can accumulate enough grime over the years to dull and darken even regularly cleaned grout and tile. My tile was actually a whole different shade than I’d thought, and now I just love walking into my bathroom seeing my bright white grout and freshly clean tile gleaming in the light. The floor looks almost new!

I’m not the only who is obsessed with Zep, which is just $7.58 a bottle at Walmart and doesn’t even require much scrubbing.

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It’s got thousands of good reviews, you can see a reviewer rave about it in the video above, and my colleague Kristen Aiken used it on her vintage bathroom tile and was also blown away.

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“My apartment’s bathroom is original from 1931, so the grout on my ivory subway tiles has understandably yellowed over time,” she told me. “For the past 10 years I’ve been drawing over the grout lines with a grout-whitening pen, but it’s time consuming to draw every little line. I read good things about Zep and gave it a try, and was overjoyed to not only discover that it whitened my grout in a fraction of the time, but it also revealed that my ‘ivory’ subway tiles were much whiter than I thought. That wasn’t my intention, but it was a huge added bonus!”

All I had to with the Zep was spread it onto a roughly 2-foot-by-2-foot section of grout, let it sit for a couple minutes, and then just sort of lightly scrub with this thin grout brush (it was at this point that I lightly wiped it over my tile as well, but you’ll want to read the directions carefully to make sure that’s OK to do on yours). I didn’t even have to press hard or scrub much; to my amazement, the dirt just sort of disappeared from the grout before my eyes. Then I rinsed that section with water and moved on to the next patch, and was done in not much time at all.

There were a few spots I touched up afterward with the same type of grout pen Kristen used, which is only to be expected with grout that’s at least 50-years-old (in one spot, a previous tenant had spilled candle wax). This three-product combination led to one of the most dramatic cleaning transformations I’ve ever enjoyed, and I can’t recommend it enough if you have once-bright grout that’s now dark or dull, or a floor that just doesn’t seem as clean as it could be.

Grab a single bottle at Walmart. Zep says its grout cleaner is not abrasive to tile surfaces and safe for tinted grout, but you will want to read the directions carefully to make sure it’s OK to use on your specific floors or shower. You may just experience results like Kristen and I did, or like these reviewers below.

Promising review:

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“The holy grail of grout cleaner: This is it. The holy grail of grout cleaner. I barely had to scrub and it worked in way less than three minutes. No notes, this product is exceptional.” —Jen

“This stuff works great!!!: Did a great job getting the grout back it to its original color. My place is a rental and the tile looked this was when I moved it. The grout has been this way for over three years and cant say how long it was this way before I moved in. I honestly thought the color of the original grout was a grey until I cleaned it and was shocked to discover it was an ivory color. The grime came up so effortlessly. The process I used was to squirt it on the grout lines you can see the solution turn like a bright white, then I took a small grout brush and ran it back and forth a few times to make sure the stuff was working and the grime just seem to fall to side revealing the ivory grout underneath. I will be purchasing more for the rest of the house.” —Denise

"I've used many grout cleaners over the years. This is the best hands down! I highly recommend. Although I hate scrubbing grout it's a necessary evil every few years." —Jackie

Get a bottle from Walmart for $7.58 or a three-pack from Amazon for $32.99.

Reviews have been edited for length and/or clarity.