Painting bathroom tiles

sarahTT

A neighbour has asked me about a problem with some of her bathroom tiles. She's painted them a while ago with an unspecified white colour... which has now partly flaked off, see pic.

Perhaps the paint wasn't even waterproof, she really doesn't know what she's used. The tile shown has seen no abrasion as it's on the far end of the bathtub but probably some water from the shower.

She now wants to do something about those tiles and thinks that she'd first get rid of the old paint as much as she can. But what then... what to put on those lovely tiles? I've thought about basic bathroom paint but perhaps there's something better? The area to cover isn't that large as it's just this one row round the room, so even some "expensive but good" stuff would be fine.

Many thanks for hints and suggestions!

MysteryMe

You can get paint specifically formulated for painting tiles, most of the DIY stores and main players like Dulux make it. It's more expensive than bathroom paint, but tile paint is fit for the purpose it is intended.  

sarahTT

Thanks! I have already looked into some of the players, and yes, it's more expensive but it's a small surface so may be OK. Any idea which, if any, of the various makes, Dulux, Johnstone, Rust-Oleum... does the best job? Or "does what it says on the tin"!?

MysteryMe

I don't have any personal recommendations, I've only painted tiles once and can't remember what brand it was TBH. I think proprietary brands are all fairly similar in quality. Hopefully someone on here has used tile paint recently.

A lot of the time the brand people chose is based on what colours are available in the range.

sarahTT

MysteryMe said:

A lot of the time the brand people chose is based on what colours are available in the range.

Actually I don't know what colour she's thinking about, I just assumed it'll be white again as she'd started with that first time round. But we haven't even spoken about the colour.

And thanks again!

sarahTT

To put this to bed: I've spend some time with some other boards and there was a clear preference for some "specialist" primers as as base for tile painting. We've now found a local dealer that stocks Moore's Insl-X STIX, not cheap, but apparently among the best for that job. We shall see

sarahTT

Final word: neighbour has now done the tiles with that primer and we've then painted some of them, looks great and colour seems to be "sticking". Good stuff.

MysteryMe

That's good to hear.