Monday, October 27, 2008

Grout Colorant

Grout colorant is a concentrated cement dye. It can be used to tint your grout and thinset. It is very strong so a little goes a long, long way. If you are going to tint a cup of grout, you can get a strong color by using as little as a teaspoon of colorant!

Since these are tints, you can mix them to make unusual shades. I love to mix one colorant into a particular color of grout to make subtle changes. For instance, the terra cotta grout is a too orange for me so I soften it by adding the brown colorant. It makes it much more earthy.

I always add the colorant to white grout or thinset but I have friends that always add it to gray grout and thinset. The colors aren't as pastel looking and less vivid.

The only drawback to using the grout colorant is that you have a huge chance of never matching up the grout if you have to mix a second batch. If you have a large area to grout and you are going to need to mix your grout several times to get the job done, make sure to measure the colorant carefully and write down how the ratio of grout to colorant. This way you can mix it the same every time and hopefully your grout will match with each new mixture.

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