Design Ideas to Cover Tile

Redesigning a bathroom or kitchen can be a lot of fun, but it can also be a bit of a daunting undertaking. If you dislike the tiles in your bathroom or kitchen (or elsewhere, if you happen to have tiles in other rooms of your home), you're in luck – the process to cover them in an aesthetically pleasing way isn't as difficult as you might think. It's also a fairly inexpensive process, depending on the method of covering them that you choose.

You can change the entire look of a room by replacing the tiles that are currently in place. However, ripping up tiles is time-consuming and fairly difficult, especially if you don't work in construction or carpentry.

One option is to cover your current tiles with sticky vinyl or vinyl decals. This is an especially creative solution if you're only dealing with a few visually unappealing or cracked tiles that you want to cover. A decal or sticker can easily hide a crack and will also give your wall a bit more pop.

Another unique way to breathe new life into your tiles is by decorating the grout. You can spice up the grout between the tiles by using a grout pen to turn the color either black, white or any other color that might mesh well with the tiles.

You can also use paint to cover existing tiles. Tile paint can be especially helpful in this scenario because it's specially formulated for tile. You can easily change your tiles and the whole look of your room by painting over your tiles and creating a new color scheme.

Alkyd and oil-based paints are the best types of paint for covering tiles since they won't fade and will shine in any light level. Oil-based paints, in particular, will look best if you use multiple coats, and you'll need to ensure that it dries in between layers. Ultimately, you'll need to remember that alkyd paint works best on dry tiled surfaces and oil-based paints will work best on wet surfaces, such as those in bathrooms or the backsplash in kitchens.

Alkyd paint will only stick to tiles if you sand off all the glossy coating on the tiles beforehand. If you're going this route, you'll need to start by cleaning the tile and removing any grit or mold that might have built up over time. From there, you'll continue by sanding down the tile as mentioned to remove the glossy coating. Once that's done, you'll then need to clean the tile to remove any of the sand left behind; otherwise, it might mix in with the paint and result in a gritty end product.

Once you've decided the best approach for covering bathroom tiles, be sure to follow safety precautions, like ventilating the room properly and keeping children away from your work area. Fortunately, even if you decide that you don't prefer the tile cover up ideas that you've selected, both painted tile and covered tiles are fairly easy to replace or cover up once more. You can also always remove them in the future.