Hi L.A.
TYW Grout Stain & Seal is opaque. It’s more like paint, than a wood stain. It penetrates the grout joint much better than a paint or colorant, though. That’s why we can’t recommend a drastic grout color change. You can’t go from white to black. The joint will look “shadowed”, because the stain allows for the sand (texture) of a sanded grout to show. This is a good thing, because the stained and sealed joint retains a natural look. It doesn’t look “painted” on, by any means. You can change the color a bit, we recommend going up, or down, 4 shades or so. Keeping with the same basic color, just different shades.
TYW Grout Stain & Seal really excels on sanded joints. You can apply it with a grout sponge and wipe the excess from the tile…without wiping it out of the joint. You cannot do that with a paint or colorant. This drastically increases your production rate, over a paint or colorant.
It can work on unsanded joints, but it does not work as designed. This goes for both the product and the method of application. Unsanded grout is too dense for the stain to penetrate, so we have to rely on straight bonding strength. The stain really sticks to surfaces, but this is where a colorant has better properties. Most colorants bond, in a topical application, better than our stain, but they do have a painted-on look. So our stain will work on unsanded (I’ve done it many times), but I feel more comfortable with a colorant in this application.
Grout stain and seal product
