Reason why grout turns yellow, wear and tear

Reason behind the rate of yellowing/peel off/ wear and tear

Traditional Grouting

Most default grout is porous(sand). It means will absorb any liquid and dirt, it will become dirty, stains, mold, and a reservoir of bacteria.

In the construction and renovation industry, there are many companies that have tried to do Acrylic/Epoxy grouting.

To actually do a good job for Acrylic/Epoxy Grouting, there are a multiple factors that applicators need to know, two of them being.

Skills+Experience

Grouting may look like an easy process, but to actually achieve a clean/near perfect finish, it requires a lot of experience and knowledge. Not many tilers or even particular applicators spend the time to research and refine their techniques.

So many of the final product turns out like this.

Quality of Products

On the market there is a vast multitude of products. When doing grouting works, it is important not only to have the skills but also to pick the right kind of products.

-Lower quality acrylic/epoxy grout will turn yellow quickly ( < 6 months), quick drying (2 hours) easy to peel off and extremely brittle after curing.

-Mid range acrylic/epoxy grout can last from 3 to 5 years without turning as yellowish, it takes slightly longer to dry (3-6 hours) but still suffers from brittleness.

-Higher range acrylic/epoxy grout can easily last 10 years or more, best to be cleared off after curing for 8 hours ^, it is very flexible and has great tensile strength, breaking/peeling off is usually not a problem.

Yellowing/ Discolouration

All colours will slowly fade/turn yellow due to a chemical reaction known as bromine demoleculization (present in all plastic-base material) however acrylic grouting is able to mitigate the effect, in essence slow down the process by 98%. Usually the slight yellowing happens only with Pure White after 10 years.

-Every thing(matter) has a certain level of UV resistance, there is no such thing as not being UV resistant, it boils down to the type of anti UV properties a product has.

Acrylic in fact is considered one of the most UV resistant material you can commonly find with up to 98% resistance against UV rays, actually even anti UV films for windows and paints make use of acrylic properties.

We understand that a certain company has been attaching certain photos of "yellowed" acrylic/epoxy grouting which is in fact a colour that can be chosen from the variety of colours we have available.

On this matter, for people who are interested in adding a tinge of creativeness to the colouration of their grouting, do feel free to contact us and we will be more than willing to share the different colours available.

- To answer the question (that why developers use grout during installation)

Developers use grout powder to do grouting mainly due to the low cost of grouting powder not because it is better, any contractors out there will tell you, finishing up a tiling job using grouting powder is probably one of the biggest nightmare for them as the constant need to avoid the grouting with any form of chemicals or liquid makes handing over a project extremely time consuming for them.

Doing normal grout powder/sealing for a whole apartment can be extremely fast ; <30 mins, but to have it be lasting requires alot of effort hence contractors usually prefer to keep grouting as the final few steps.

From Tiler

From ID

From home owner