Update -Rustoleum Tile Floor Paint
One year ago I was asking myself - Can you paint over tile floors, How do you paint tile floors, and Does tile floor paint really work? Exactly one year ago I decided to tackled this DIY project that I had been so nervous to even attempt - painting my entryway slate tile. To this day, it is my most viewed how-to tutorial blog post and the project I still get the most questions about. So here is the update you have been waiting for!
If you didn’t see the original blog post tutorial, you can see it HERE. I painted this entryway tile in September 2020. We ended up moving out of this house at the end of March 2021 so we lived with the painted floors for only 6 months. During those 6 months, we walked on them probably 50+ times a day. We used the front door to come in and out of the house throughout the day everyday and this entryway connected our main living room to our kitchen and the rest of our house. So this floor was basically the central hub of our home. In addition to walking on it daily, we also had two dogs that walked on it and my 2 year old son who drug toys and pushed his toy cars on it on a regular basis.
I honestly didn’t have the highest hopes for the tile paint and kept waiting for a scratch or chip to appear but it didn’t happen! To my own surprise, the tile paint held up incredibly well. Despite the daily foot traffic, dog nails, and toddler toys, the painted tile remained shiny, rich, and scratch-free. However…
Now, for the one negative:
When we began to move out of this house, I wanted to protect the floors since I knew we would be dragging lots of boxes and furniture over the tile and out our front door. So I laid thick brown crate paper over the tile and used blue painter’s tap to hold the paper down on the painted tile. For 10 days we left the tile covered with the paper as be moved boxes and furniture out of the house. The day before we sold the house, I yanked up the blue tape holding the paper down quickly without thinking and noticed a couple small dark spots on the sticky side of the tape. As I looked closer, I realized that it was small pieces of the tile paint that pulled up on the tape.
Because our original tile was dark and very similar to the color I painted them, you could not see where the very small pieces of paint had peeled off the tile. But if I had painted the tile a contrasting color (like painting black tile white), then it would have been noticeable.
So here are my final thoughts:
I believe that if I hadn’t of put the blue tape on the painted tile and left it there for 10 days allowing the tape adhesive to really bond with tile paint, I truly think the tile paint would have been flawless. I was so happy with the outcome of this project and I would 100% use this product again in another home. I had done a lot of research before starting this project and I still believe that this Rustoleum Home Floor paint is still the best floor tile paint kit out there!
One thing I think that really helped the floors hold up was the fact that we gave them a full 24 hours to dry and then really babied them for another 7 days after the top coat was dry. During those 7 days we only walked on the tile if we absolutely had to. We tried to only wear socks on them (no shoes) for 7 days also. I was also very careful to not drag any furniture, packages that were delivered or anything heavy on them for a couple weeks. After that first couple weeks, we went back to living life as usual.
