How to whitewash Terracota tiles?

maccifo

Good evening,

We have moved to a new house and the terracota tiles are a bit outdated, specially considering the rest of the house style.

We see a few different options:

- Change tiling. Considering the area it would be quite an expensive exercise to demolish tiles and sand/cement base to the timber suspended floor.

- Install tiles or flooring over. This would create a larger gap with adjacent rooms although a hybrid laminate would do (specially considering that adjacent rooms carpet iss going to be changed to laminate). 

- Paint the tiles or whitewash them. This is the most economic solution and we can always default to option 1 or 2 if it doesn't work.

So my question is, what is the best way to whitewash these terracota tiles. Has anyone have done anything similar

Regards 

Sergio

JacobZ

Hi Sergio (@maccifo),

I'm not confident that whitewashing your tiles would be a good idea long-term. Whitewashed paint is a relatively soft coating that would be prone to wear, and floor tiles, being a surface that is walked on, would be very prone to wear. The only tile paints that I am aware of that can be used on floor tiles are extremely specific about how they need to be applied, and watering them down to create a whitewashed look would not be recommended.

Removing and replacing the tiles or laying new flooring over the top would be much better options long-term.

If the tiles were installed correctly, they should be attached over fibre cement tile underlay like this James Hardie Ceramic Tile Underlay. If you could peel back the carpet edge or remove a grout line to confirm that there was fibre cement beneath the tiles, then it shouldn't be too hard to remove and replace the tiles.

Alternatively, you can account for changes in the flooring height fairly easily if you choose to tile or lay flooring over the top. There are a variety of transition trims that would be useful.

Let me know what you think and if you have further questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

Jacob