Floor tile cleaning in Adelaide

Add up your own floor

Floor tile cleaning by area

Area	Standard clean	Neglected grout	Cleaned + clear sealed
10 m²Laundry, toilet, entry	$149	$149	$149
20 m²Kitchen and dining	$160	$220	$260
30 m²Kitchen, dining, family room	$240	$330	$390
40 m²Open-plan living	$320	$440	$520
60 m²Whole living zone	$480	$660	$780
80 m²Tiled-through home	$640	$880	$1040

Rooms under the minimum are charged at $149. Measure length × width of each tiled room and add them up; a rough figure is fine and we confirm on the day. Bathrooms and showers are priced per room, not per metre: see tile and grout cleaning.

What a floor clean includes

• Sweep or vacuum, and a look at the grout: sound, cracked, or sealed?
• Pre-treatment matched to the soiling: alkaline degreaser on kitchen and living floors, a neutral cleaner on terrazzo, slate and stone, an outdoor treatment for algae and leaf tannin
• Dwell time so the product can break the grease and dirt down
• Machine scrubbing across open areas, grout brushes along every edge, corner and skirting line
• Rinse and extraction with a wet-vacuum, so the slurry leaves the house instead of drying back into the grout
• A walk-through with you, drying advice, and sealing if you have added it

The floors we see most in Adelaide

Large porcelain with light grout in homes built or renovated in the last twenty years: the grout was spotless at handover and has greyed with every mop. These come back almost completely and are the best candidates for clear sealing straight afterwards. 1970s to 90s ceramic in brown, terracotta, cream or sand through a kitchen-meals-family area, with cement grout that mopping has turned the colour of the tiles: these come up several shades lighter, sometimes with a shadow that colour sealing evens out. Terrazzo and slate from the 1950s to 80s in laundries, entries and living rooms: cleaned with neutral products and a rotary machine, old polish residue stripped, then sealed; we don't grind or polish stone (see the terrazzo guide). Alfresco and verandah tiles: dust, leaf tannin, green algae in the shade and barbecue grease, cleaned at the same rate with a controlled rinse (see outdoor tiles).

Why floor grout goes dark, and why mopping makes it worse

Grout lines sit lower than the tiles. Every mop pushes a film of dirty water across the tiles and into the lines, where it dries. Adelaide's long dry summers add fine dust that comes in on feet and settles in the same place, and near the cooktop airborne grease glues it in. More mopping moves more dirty water into the grout. What reverses it is a cleaner that breaks the grease down, agitation along each line, and then extracting the dirty solution. The full explanation is in why grout goes black.

Hire a machine, or book it?

Hiring a tile scrubber and buying chemicals usually costs about as much as a professional clean of one room, and most hire machines scrub without extracting, so the slurry has to be mopped up, which puts some of it back in the grout. For one small area with light grout, a brush and an oxygen-bleach paste on a Saturday is a fair first go, and our guide to cleaning grout yourself walks through it. For whole floors, kitchen bench lines and grout that has been dark for years, rinse-and-extraction is what gets the result.

Drying, furniture and timing

As a guide, 30 m² of floor takes two to three hours; neglected grout takes longer. Floors are walkable in socks within an hour or two, and grout dries through over the following day. Clear heavy furniture you want cleaned under, or tell us what to work around; light pieces are moved and put back. If you are selling or moving out, book a week ahead so sealing has time to cure before photos or the final inspection.

Tile and grout cleaning and sealing are not building work, so no licence is needed for them in South Australia. Regrouting and grout repair are treated as building work, so they are quoted separately and carried out by a licensed tiler.