Grout is the connective tissue of any tile installation, and its choice affects both how the floor looks and how it performs over decades. The wrong grout in a high-moisture application stains and fails prematurely. The wrong colour grout undermines an otherwise beautiful tile choice. The wrong joint width creates either a cluttered busy floor or a dramatic grid that overpowers the room. Understanding grout options before selecting the tile produces better-coordinated results than treating grout as an afterthought.
This guide walks through the major grout categories — sanded cement, unsanded cement, and epoxy — explains how joint width and colour choice affect the finished look, and covers care requirements for different grout types.
Table of Contents
- The Short Answer
- Why Grout Matters as Much as Tile
- The Three Grouts, Side by Side
- Sanded Cement Grout: The Standard for Floor Joints
- Unsanded Cement Grout: For Narrow Joints
- Epoxy Grout: Premium and Stain-Proof
- Why Joint Width Choice Matters
- How to Choose Grout Colour
- Common Grout Colour Mistakes
- Why Grout Sealing Matters for Cement-Based Grout
- How to Care for Different Grout Types
- Choosing Grout: The Order to Do It In
- Related Guides
- Want Help Choosing the Right Grout for Your Tile?
- Frequently Asked Questions
The Short Answer
Sanded cement grout for most floors, epoxy where the room is busy or wet, unsanded only for joints under 1/8 inch. On colour, a mid-tone almost always outlasts a pale one in how it looks, and bright white on a floor is a decision that needs a reason.
Grout is 5 to 15 percent of the visible floor and close to 100 percent of the complaints. The type decides the maintenance you are signing up for; the colour decides whether the floor reads as one surface or as a grid.
Why Grout Matters as Much as Tile
Grout occupies between 5 and 15 percent of the visible floor area depending on tile size and joint width, which means it has a meaningful visual impact even though most homeowners don’t think about it during tile selection. Beyond the visual role, grout serves practical functions: it bonds adjacent tiles, accommodates the small dimensional variations between tiles, allows for slight movement of the floor without cracking the tiles themselves, and provides a finished surface that can be cleaned and sealed.
Grout choices that don’t fit the tile or the application produce problems that surface over the years. Stains in cement grout that won’t come out. Cracking grout in installations with subfloor movement. Colours that don’t coordinate with the tile or the room.
The Three Grouts, Side by Side
| Sanded cement | Unsanded cement | Epoxy | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Joint width | 1/8 inch and wider | Under 1/8 inch | Any |
| Typical use | Most floors | Walls, tight rectified joints | High-use kitchens, bathrooms, showers |
| Sealing | Every 1 to 2 years | Every 1 to 2 years | None |
| Stain resistance | Fair, sealed | Fair, sealed | Effectively stain-proof |
| Relative cost | Baseline | Slightly higher | 2 to 4 times cement |
| Installation | Straightforward | Straightforward | Fast cure, needs a skilled hand |
Read that table with the sealing row in mind before the cost row. The price gap between cement and epoxy is a one-time number; the sealing schedule is a commitment that runs for the life of the floor, and it is the one most households quietly stop honouring after the second or third year.
Sanded Cement Grout: The Standard for Floor Joints
Sanded cement grout is the standard choice for floor tile installations with joint widths of 1/8 inch or wider. The sand in the mixture provides the compressive strength that wider joints need to resist cracking and the mass that fills the joints completely. It’s affordable, widely available in many colours, and acceptable in most residential floor applications.
Sanded cement grout requires sealing to resist staining. The initial sealing happens shortly after installation; subsequent re-sealing every 1 to 2 years maintains the protection. Cement grout naturally varies in colour during initial curing — the colour you see at installation can shift slightly as the grout fully dries — and this is normal, not a defect. For floor tile in typical residential applications, sanded cement grout is usually the right answer, and it is what most of the floors in our tile guide assume.
Unsanded Cement Grout: For Narrow Joints
Unsanded cement grout is designed for joint widths under 1/8 inch — typically wall tile installations or floor installations with very tight joints. Without the sand, the grout produces a smoother finished surface and works better in narrow gaps where sanded grout wouldn’t pack in fully. It’s slightly more expensive than sanded grout but covers similar colour ranges.
Unsanded grout’s narrower application range means it’s less common in floor installations, where most projects use joints wider than 1/8 inch for both aesthetic and practical reasons. When unsanded grout shows up in floor projects, it’s usually in installations using rectified large-format tiles with very tight joints to produce a near-seamless appearance.
Epoxy Grout: Premium and Stain-Proof
Epoxy grout is the premium grout category — essentially stain-proof, waterproof, and maintenance-free relative to cement-based alternatives. The epoxy chemistry produces a non-porous finished surface that resists nearly everything that stains cement grout: spilled wine, coffee, food, soap scum. Epoxy grout doesn’t need sealing and looks the same after ten years as it did at installation.
The trade-offs are cost (2 to 4 times the cost of cement grout) and installation difficulty (epoxy is much harder to work with, requiring faster cleanup and more skilled labour). For high-use kitchens, busy bathrooms, and any installation where grout staining has been a problem in previous tile floors, the upgrade to epoxy is usually worth the cost difference.
Why Joint Width Choice Matters
Joint width affects both the visual appearance and the practical performance of the tile installation. Wide joints (1/4 inch or more) emphasize each individual tile and the grid pattern they form, producing a more traditional or rustic look. Tight joints (1/16 to 1/8 inch) produce a cleaner, more contemporary appearance with less visual emphasis on the grout. Very tight joints (1/16 inch or less) approach a near-seamless appearance that works with rectified large-format tiles in modern installations.
Joint width also affects practical considerations. Wider joints accommodate more dimensional variation between tiles, which matters for natural stone and some ceramic products where edge precision varies. Wider joints also forgive minor substrate variations that would produce lippage with tight joints. The right joint width balances aesthetic preference with the specific tile and installation conditions.
- Wide joints, 1/4 inch or more — emphasise each tile and the grid it forms. Traditional and rustic installations, and the most forgiving of tiles whose edges vary.
- Standard joints, 1/8 to 3/16 inch — the residential default, and the width sanded grout is designed around.
- Tight joints, 1/16 to 1/8 inch — cleaner and more contemporary, with the grout receding visually.
- Very tight, under 1/16 inch — near-seamless, and only sensible with rectified large-format tile on a substrate that is genuinely flat.
How to Choose Grout Colour
Grout colour falls into two main approaches: matching (similar tone to the tile, producing a unified expansive look) or contrasting (different tone, emphasizing the tile pattern). Both approaches work; the choice depends on design intent. Matching grout makes the floor read as a single surface, which is usually the point in a contemporary installation where the visual goal is openness. Contrasting grout emphasizes the geometric pattern and works well in traditional installations or designs where the tile pattern is part of the decoration.
Within these approaches, several colours show up most often in Ontario installations: medium grey works with nearly anything; charcoal grey contrasts well with light tiles for a modern look; cream and off-white coordinate with warm-toned tiles; brown coordinates with natural stone. Avoiding bright white grout in floor applications is generally wise because it shows every smudge and discolouration, while medium tones forgive both staining and dirt accumulation between cleanings.
Grout colour is the decision most often made in thirty seconds and regretted for a decade. Book an in-store appointment and see full-size samples against your tile before you commit.
Common Grout Colour Mistakes
Three mistakes account for most grout-colour regret, and all three are avoidable in the showroom:
- Bright white grout on a floor — the most common regret in the category. It looks superb the day it goes in, then stains, yellows and dulls within months, and no amount of cleaning fully brings it back.
- Matching a multi-tone tile too precisely — a tile carrying several tones cannot be matched by one grout colour. It will be right against some of the tile and wrong against the rest.
- Judging colour from a chip sample — a two-inch sample tells you nothing about how a colour reads across a whole floor in the room’s actual light.
A reasonable approach is to bring tile samples to a tile showroom and view multiple grout colour options against the actual tile in good light. Decisions made in a quick consultation often produce regret; decisions made with deliberate sample comparison produce better-coordinated installations.
Why Grout Sealing Matters for Cement-Based Grout
Cement-based grout is porous. Without sealing, it absorbs liquids that come into contact with it — water, spills, cleaning products — and the absorbed material affects appearance, accumulates over time, and can support mould growth in wet applications. Sealing creates a protective layer that prevents this absorption and dramatically improves the grout’s appearance over time.
Sealing should happen shortly after installation (2 to 3 weeks after grouting, once the grout has fully cured) and be refreshed every 1 to 2 years depending on use. The product cost is modest ($30 to $60 for sufficient sealer for a typical residential bathroom or kitchen) and the application is straightforward. Skipping initial sealing or letting the seal lapse for several years produces grout that stains and looks tired, which is one of the more common tile-installation complaints in Ontario homes.
How to Care for Different Grout Types
Cement-based grout care includes regular gentle cleaning (avoiding harsh acidic cleaners that damage the cement), periodic deeper cleaning with grout-specific products (the Grout Cleaning Guide covers what works and when to stop trying), and re-sealing every 1 to 2 years. Avoid bleach-based cleaners that yellow the grout over time. Avoid vinegar and other acidic cleaners that etch the cement. Use pH-neutral cleaners designed for tile and grout, applied with soft brushes for periodic deep cleaning.
Epoxy grout requires almost no specific care — most household cleaners are safe, no sealing is needed, and stains generally clean off without effort. The reduced maintenance is one of the main reasons epoxy is worth its cost premium in heavy-use applications. For households that struggle to maintain tile grout properly, epoxy can be a sanity-saving upgrade.
Choosing Grout: The Order to Do It In
- Settle the tile first. The tile decides the joint width, and the joint width decides whether the grout is sanded or unsanded.
- Judge the room honestly — how wet, how busy, and how much maintenance the household will actually do, not what it intends to do.
- In a high-use kitchen or main bathroom, price epoxy before assuming cement. The premium is smaller than a tile upgrade and it removes the sealing schedule permanently.
- Choose a mid-tone colour as the default, and treat bright white on a floor as a decision needing a specific reason.
- View full-size grout samples against the actual tile, in the light the room actually has.
- If the grout is cement-based, book the first sealing 2 to 3 weeks out while you still remember, and set the reminder for the re-seal.
Our consultants bring grout samples to in-home consultations so the colour decision can be made against the tile in the room’s own light, not under showroom lighting. Grout is the cheapest part of a tile job and the part most likely to be regretted, which is a poor combination to leave to a guess. Tile Installation: What to Expect covers when grouting happens in the sequence and how long it needs before the floor can be used.
Related Guides
A few other guides connected to this topic:
- Tile Flooring Guide for Ontario Homes: Porcelain, Ceramic, Stone & Where Each Works — The complete tile pillar.
- Best Tile for Kitchens: Durability, Cleanability & Design — Design coordination guidance.
- Best Tile for Bathrooms: Slip Resistance, Style & Long-Term Performance — Design coordination guidance.
- Grout Cleaning Guide: How to Clean Tile Grout (and When to Hire a Pro) — Closely related topic in this category.
Want Help Choosing the Right Grout for Your Tile?
The best way to choose what’s right for your home is to see the options side by side. Book an in-store appointment at one of our 17 Ontario showrooms and one of our consultants will walk you through what fits your space, your needs, and your budget – or request an in-home visit if that’s easier.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is sanded or unsanded grout better?
Sanded grout is for joints over 1/8 inch (typical floor joints). Unsanded grout is for narrow joints under 1/8 inch and certain wall applications. Each is appropriate for specific uses.
Is epoxy grout worth the extra cost?
For kitchens, bathrooms, and any high-stain-risk area, yes—epoxy grout eliminates resealing and produces significantly better long-term results.
How often should grout be sealed?
Cement-based grout typically needs sealing every 1 to 2 years for residential floors, more frequently in bathrooms and showers. Epoxy grout does not require sealing.
What colour grout should I choose?
Matching tile colour minimizes grout visibility (modern look). Contrasting emphasizes pattern. Mid-tone grout hides staining better than very light or very dark options.
