The Perfect Grout Color

Picking out the best color of grout for your completed project is extremely important. The wrong color can destroy your piece. Trust me...I have ruined several mosaics due to a bad color choice.

In the tile industry we do have a rule of thumb for grout colors. Gray and brown are always good choices with varying shades depending upon your overall color. If you are using mainly cool colors then choose gray grout, if using warm colors then use brown grout. For an overall light effect, choose a light colored grout and for darker tiles use a dark grout. So if you do your piece in mostly a rich cobalt blue with a hint of light aqua and white thrown, I would recommend a dark gray grout. The cobalt is a cool color and dark tile. If you choose to do your piece in varying shades of reds, oranges, and yellows, then I would recommend a medium tone brown grout. Does this make sense???

Using the neutral grout colors will make it to where people don't see the grout only the flow of the tiles. However, what if you want to make your grout joints stand out? Black and white will do this. Black grout is an amazing choice for those brightly colored tiles. It will give your piece a leaded stained glass feel. White will fracture your entire piece so use it sparingly. I only recommend white grout when most of your tiles are white. It is not as pleasing to the eye.

Grout colorants can give you a ton of options for grout color. Grout colorants are a strong concrete dye that resists fading. A little goes a long way! Just a teaspoon will tint 2 cups of grout to the dark shades. I only add it to white grout. This gives you brighter colors. Some people will add it to gray grout. You will still get the colors but they are more muted. You can also add the colorant to thinset and concrete (like your stepping stones).

Try mixing different colors together too. We mix terra cotta grout with brown colorant. This takes the edge off of the redness of the terra cotta giving you a rich grout color. We will also mix black grout with white grout to achieve gray tones. How about mixing blue and red colorant to get a beautiful purple? Maybe add sandstone colorant to terra cotta grout for a rich goldenrod grout. See the possibilities are endless!