Floor tile paint

[swill453]

We've got floor tiles in the kitchen that we don't particularly like. Is there any paint or other coating we could put on them that wouldn't wear through?

They will go at the next kitchen refresh which might be 3-4 years away, but looking for an easy change in the interim.

Scott.

[bungeejumper]

A long, long time ago, before Victorian encaustic tiles came back into fashion, there were people who painted over them with using what I recall as specially purposed chemical/stone paints. I was one of them! (And yes, the paint was a right bogger to remove on the porous surface if you later changed your mind. Although I think there are brick cleaning acids that do it.)

Coming back to the point, though, there's always been the standard shiny red tile paint. (Garage floor paint?) The question in my mind would be whether you could get a decent flat and level finish - as you suggest, any raised bits will quickly see the paint scuffed off by shoes. You'd want to have a paint that had some 'body' to it. Such as stone dust.

BJ

[Slarti]

have a think about warehouse floor paint.

Many years ago the company I worked for had the floor painted in a number of colours to delineate areas for different purposes.

The pain survived pallet trucks, metal cargo frames being dragged about and other physical abuse.


Slarti

[JessUK98]

I was thinking of doing similar and have seen specific floor tile paint in the likes of B&Q. Still haven’t decided if getting cheap lino would be better. Painting tiles would be an arduous process with ensuring you can navigate the room without painting yourself in the corner / still use the room while certain sections dry / keep the dog away until dried etc

[JessUK98]

@swill453 did you get anywhere with this?
I've decided to go the paint route myself now. The stuff I've seen in B&Q says floor and tile paint on their website, but the advertised tin just says heavy duty floor paint (it's Leyland, and in Screwfix one of the Q&As says it's not suitable for tiles), and the other types of floor paint I've seen seem to be for concrete/wood floors.

I was thinking about priming the tiles with Zinsser Bullseye 123 first, then using the floor paint, but dunno if this would work!

[swill453]

No, too many other jobs in the house at the moment, kitchen floor hasn't reached the top of the list.

On googling around and looking at reviews, though, it seemed that two-part paints that you mix seemed to be better than off the shelf tins.

Scott.

[PrincessB]

I'll second Slarti's suggestion of a warehouse paint.

I can think of a couple of suppliers of what could be refered to as 'Magic Paint' one is Watco another is Polycote

https://www.watco.co.uk/
https://www.polycote.com/

The Polycote website is pretty good and you can download a PDF of the catalogue which is easier to read than the website.

Disclaimer, I've never used any product from either company.

B.

[JessUK98]

Those paints seem to be mainly for the likes of concrete floors though, rather than tiles. I’m gonna have to seriously look into something soon as I’ve changed my worktops to a marble colour, and cupboard doors to white, and painted all the wall tiles by the units a medium grey. Backdoor and skirtings a shadow grey and next up is painting the walls a pebble grey. The terracotta floor tiles are ruining the look!