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What Is Grout Cleaning and Why Is It Important?

Amber Wise • 11 November 2021

Your bathroom can be one of the most beautiful areas of your home, but it can require a lot of upkeep, too. You may scrub the grout with dish soap, white vinegar, or warm water and baking soda, only to see the dinginess come back a week or two later. What is grout cleaning all about on a professional level? What’s their secret to sparkling clean bathrooms?

Grout and tile floors generally require special cleaning methods to stay strong and look their best. In fact, when you scrub too hard or use the wrong cleaning products, you can do more harm than good! In this guide, we’ll walk you through some of the reasons why professional grout cleaning is so important in your home.

Click here to learn more about Steam Smart Pro’s carpet cleaning services, grout cleaning services, and other professional cleaning options.

Benefits of Professional Grout Cleaning: Why to Leave It to the Pros

While some enterprising homeowners might want to try their hand at cleaning their grout, there’s a reason why we offer it as a service! While many shower and floor cleaners will refresh your grout when it needs it, nothing replaces a real, professional clean every few months. Here are some reasons why.

Grout Appearance and Strength

Dirty floors can be off-putting to guests who enter your home, and they might end up bothering you, too! However, cleaning grout yourself can be an incredibly lengthy and involved process. Simply mopping over your tiles as a whole won’t cut it – even if the tiles themselves look refreshed, the grout most likely isn’t.

Instead, you need to clean each grout line individually with a toothbrush or grout-safe scrubber, in addition to grout-safe cleaners such as baking soda. Unless you only have a few feet of grout to clean, this isn’t worth your time or energy.

Plus, if you try and cut corners with harsh cleaners and scrubbers, you could end up doing more harm than good to your floors. Mop water can sometimes stain your grout an unsightly color, and the wrong cleaning techniques can eat or rub away at your grout, too.

Consider letting a professional tile and grout cleaner do the job for you. The professionals will have grout cleaning machines and products that do the job quickly and efficiently, all in a way that’s entirely safe for your floors.

Cleanliness and Sanitation

So, what is grout cleaning, and why is it necessary? If you care about germ-free results, professional cleaning services are a no-brainer. Even with the best mop and bucket on the market, you could still end up with leftover water that can spawn bacteria and mildew growth. This is especially common in your bathroom, which can stay wet for multiple days at a time.

Bacterial and fungal infestations can be challenging to get rid of once they set in, so it pays to prevent them from ever becoming a problem. Plus, they can make your beautiful tile floors smell moldy and unpleasant. Severe enough infestations can pose health hazards as well.

When you want a truly sanitary result, trusting the professionals is the way to go. The pros have access to powerful cleaning products that can target every nook and cranny of your tile floors, keeping invaders at bay.

Tile floors tend to hold onto dirt and germs, especially in the grouted areas themselves. The sanitary result offered by professional tile cleaners provides peace of mind that DIY cleaners just can’t match. Plus, if you have family members who are immunocompromised, a germ-free clean is incredibly valuable.

Safety and Functionality

Bathroom and kitchen tiles come in thousands of different colors, shapes, and sizes, and those tiles can have different slip levels, too. If your home has any tiles that get slippery when wet, it may be smart to leave the floor cleaning to the pros. This is doubly true if you live with elderly or frail family members who could get seriously hurt from slipping on a wet floor.

Leaving your floors to get dirty isn’t a safe alternative, either. When enough dirt, dust, and particles build up on a tile floor, it eventually becomes just as slippery as it would be when wet. Plus, if you spill something slick, such as cooking oil, you could end up with a dangerous, difficult-to-clean mess.

The right cleaning and tile treatment products can make an enormous difference in your floors’ slickness. A fresh, clean floor is a safe floor, and many pros use products specifically designed to keep them non-slip, too.

Longevity and Value

A beautiful tile floor in a home adds tons of value, but when the homeowner doesn’t care for it properly, it can quickly become a liability instead. The best way to keep your tile floor looking its best is to have a professional clean it regularly. A clean tile floor experiences less wear over time, too, since grime, oils, and other particles can eventually wear away at your grout.

Tile floors aren’t cheap, and many homeowners prefer them in a high-end home, so keeping them clean is worth the investment! Repairing a tile floor is an expensive, lengthy, and sometimes invasive process, and it’s one you want to avoid at all costs.

While no professional can make your tile floors last forever, an experienced cleaning crew can extend the usable life on your tile by several years. If you plan to sell your home, this could mean the difference between an easy and a hard sell.

In the end, the answer to “What is grout cleaning?” depends on who’s asking the question. To us, grout cleaning is all about maintaining the strength, beauty, safety, and value of your tiles, not just making them look temporarily beautiful.

If you need Tucson tile and grout cleaning services, consider contacting Steam Smart Pro today to see what we have to offer. We’re professional steam cleaners, and we also clean air ducts, carpets, dryer vents, and upholstery in addition to tile and grout. Contact us at (520) 600-6467 today for a quick, easy, no-obligation quote.

Author Bio:

Eric Bullard

The owner of Steam Smart Pro in Tucson, AZ, brings over 20 years of invaluable experience in the field of carpet, tile, and air duct cleaning. With a strong dedication to quality and a deep understanding of effective cleaning techniques, Eric consistently delivers outstanding results to his satisfied residential and commercial clients.

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