Here’s a question we received just the other day:
“Hi, I have shiny black porcelain tiles in the kitchen which we have put a tile sealer on. We have the same porcelain tiles in our toilet with no sealer on. When I clean the toilet tiles they shine after just a mop however when I mop the sealer covered ones in the kitchen, unless I mop, then scrub, then buff then they look smeary. How can I remove the sealer from the porcelain tiles in the toilet? Any ideas are welcome please?”
And our suggested answer:
“Your situation sounds fairly straight-forward. Perhaps, your porcelain did not need a sealer, not all do, or perhaps too much was applied – in any event, you have got sealer residue left on the surface (this is not where it is meant to be, it is supposed to be just inside any pores in the tile and the surplus should have been removed from the surface before it dried). So, now you have a very thin coating of a polymer of some kind adhered to the face of the tiles. This residue, will attract dirt and will not be as easy to clean as the bare tile.
So, you need to remove it, depending on how long it has had to cure, and how much there is etc, you may be able to remove simply with MicroscrubTM, a little water, and a white nylon pad – take a look at our recent post on how to use MicroscrubTM.
If the sealer is now quite old and MicroscrubTM on it’s own is not quite enough, then you may need to soften it up with a proprietary solvent stripper. The way to use this is to apply it neat to the floor, leave it for about 30 minutes then scrub and rinse well. You could add some MicroscrubTM just at the point you are about to start scrubbing if you like as this would boost the cleaning power of the stripper.
Hope this helps”
Copyright Ian Taylor and The Tile and Stone Blog.co.uk, 2013. See copyright notice above.
I have put a wax on my porcelain unglazed tile floor called quick shine and it has turned out to be a bad thing. I was trying to cover the smears and smudges up from when it was laid. It was not cleaned of the grout haze good when it was installed. Now I have a big problem on my handsThe lady told me the wax shouldn’t hurt my tile but it did, she has sent a bottle of cleaner to try and clean it up , but it is more than I can do . I need help I’m 75 yrs old
Hi Patricia,
OK, sorry to hear you are having these issues. First of all though, just to reassure you the wax will not have caused any harm to your tiles, and being porcelain it is most likely that it will be really easy to get off. In fact, the reason it has not worked is that the wax cannot really get into the tile tile to do anything, so it just sits on the surface making it look smeary. The bottle of cleaner the tile store has sent is most likely an alkaline cleaner that should strip the wax straight back off again – it is easy to do, mix the cleaner with water, mop on the floor, leave to dwell for a few minutes scrub/mop off. then rinse with clean water.
I appreciate this may seem a lot of work, but I also feel that it is not really much more than normal mopping so why pay a specialist to come and do it for you. Having said that if you are unable to do it there are plenty of tile and stone cleaning specialists around who would come out and do it for you. They would also be able to offer advice on how to remove some of the original grout haze smears also
Hope this helps
Ian