I learned my lesson about grout colors when we built our house. I had beige tile on my tub surround, and we picked a beige grout than seemed to match. After it was all grouted, I flipped because it looked "pink". I made them remove all the grout and re-do it with another shade. After that, we did sample boards to check our grout colors before hand.

I think almost all whites and beiges have a "tint" which can really affect the final look. So I would urge you to always do a sample board.

I believe I've just finished grouting my bathroom with the Laticrete Bright White Permacolor grout, although it will have to wait until I get home to verify that I'm not mis-remembering which brand. It is definitely a bright white.

We used laticrete sauterne grout for our ivory/noce travertine backsplash. It is NOT white. It's an off-white for sure, with what I'd call a hint of tan.
There is a definite contrast when I hold up something "real white" next to the grout.

If it helps at all, this is Sauterne Spectralock:

Thanks for the heads-up re: sauterne grout. prickly pearcactus, if you could check and see what you used, I would appreciate it very much. If the Laticrete Bright White isn't very white after all, I have a feeling I will have to stick with TEC (at least for the white) or possibly Mapei Avalanche (which is even whiter).

If anyone else can chime in...?

Cat mom!!! How ARE you??? You know how much I loved your kitchen. Now that you're doing your bathroom (and we are going to do ours sometime this year), I can't wait to see what you select. I'm sure it will be stunning.

Sue

The bright white is white that's colored white and which, in theory, should stay white. This is in contrast to the regular white which looks white when it's wet, but is really a greige color and makes people nuts when it dries because they thought it was supposed to be white.

I think the grout in my laundry is Laticrete bright white and it is white. I think it went in during August and is still white. :) There's no good way to get an accurate picture of it however, because there's no natural light in there and the electric light is purposefully very yellow.

Hey there! I've seen some of your recent posts and thought--"hey, I know her!" We're doing well. We're enjoying our kitchen tremendously. I am still tickled that others love how it turned out as much as we do!

Thank you for the vote of confidence re: the bathrooms. We are actually doing two at once (are we crazy?!?!). We're "stealing" about 1 ft of space from the hall bath to make the MB slightly less claustrophobia-inducing. It will still be tiny, but every extra inch of space helps!

I'm looking forward to seeing yours, too. Hope you'll be posting pics before too long!

plllog, any way you could find out? The sample chip I have here for Laticrete Bright White is not so white compared to TEC's Bright White, Mapei's White and definitely not compared to Mapei's Avalanche. Right now we're leaning towards TEC's Bright White for the Daltile field tile and that or Mapei's Avalanche or White for the other bathroom; Porcelanosa field tile, and White Thassos border tile.

This is only to tell you about a negative experience I had with the Laticrete permacolor grout. Chose toasted almond #52-sample shows color to be medium dark tan. When it was grouted, it appeared very pale beige-almost creamy white-like the Laticrete almond #85. Back to tile store-they did a test and sure enough, way lighter than sample picture. I was given Aqua Mix Pro Enrich N Seal to darken the grout for free courtesy of Laticrete-the tile store had spoken to them. Definitely do a sample board-wish we had done that.

Cat_Mom, I just meant that it's actually white. I know my tile setters usually use Laticrete, and we were discussing the tile manufacture's instructions for bright white, and they were nodding. It might take awhile to find out for sure.

Here's my best attempt at a picture, but in trying to get the white to come up true, it went gray from the shadows. If you can wrap your head around imagining it without shadows, you'll get that it's really white. :) Whether the whitist is Mapei, or whatever, I have no opinion on, but it's a true white, compared to my walls which white I mixed myself.

Re Chris's experience, never choose grout from a picture. Laticrete's plastic samples aren't bad, better, than ink on paper, but if you really care what it's going to look like, do samples.

Hm... Online the grout in the picture looks pinkish, but I think that's the lighting, or a reflection. See! The picture is pretty useless. The truest part seems to be the bottom toward the right, but, sigh, this is just not easy to photograph.

Thanks so much for the input chris45ny and for the pics plllog (love that tile BTW!). I really need to decide soon so I can be done with this.

Not sure how feasible it is to do sample boards, although that would certainly be helpful. If I have leftover pieces of Thassos from the downstairs bath, I might be able to try just to get the idea (I don't think we have enough overage of the Thassos border tile to start mucking about with it). The field tile for the MB is 8 X 20, and the floor tile (blackish) is 12 X 24. Those would make some very large sample boards! LOL

Even if you can't do a fair sized sample board you could do what the guy at the tile store did for us. We brought in one of our floor tiles and the grout. He kept both-mixed up the grout and put it in the center of the tile. The next day when we returned we were all able to see how much lighter it was not only from the picture but also from the "plastic" bar sample. IRL the toasted almond grout didn't look like either the pic or the sample bar. You can be sure I'm going to test before any grouting for the fire and ice backsplash as I've chosen another Laticrete permacolor-natural gray. I may need to check out some other brands!!

I feel for you as white is one of the most difficult-especially since there are SO MANY variations of white.

Luckily we've used TEC's Bright White twice so we know what we're getting with it, so to speak. Also, the field tile will be the same as the field tile in the completed guest bathroom, so we knows it looks perfectly fine with it. The Bari Blanco Porcelanosa tile is a really white, glossy tile, so I'm thinking a whiter grout would look better with it.

PS I read your thread re: the Laticrete Permacolor fiasco. What a difference in color! I hope you're able to resolve this favorably.

On the fence re: the Thassos. That probably warrants a test/sample. I don't want a grout that looks "off" with the tile or vice-versa--would hate for the grout to make the Thassos look anything less than sparkling white.

Hi
Last August we renovated our bathroom and retiled the entire bathroom with Laticrete Brite White 1600 unsanded grout. Today our grout has turned a yellow/orange color.
However, when we look under the rug and behind the towel rack where the light hasn't hit the grout its bright white -the color we thought we were getting.

According to the directions on the bag we bought we were to mix the grout with water, wait 15 minutes and apply. We followed the instructions to a tee.

Anyone have this same problem? HELP!! I'm at my wits' end.

I realize this is an old post, but it is so informative--thanks everyone! I have the same situation as the OP, wanting to use Laticrete's #44 Bright White on Thassos tile by Porcelanosa. Laticrete has just released a new grout called Spectralock 1 which has no epoxy resins nor is it cement-based, but it performs to the same ANSI standards as epoxy and is backed by a lifetime warranty. A tech from Laticrete on the phone this morning told me this is an outstanding product. It was released in December 2019, and they have had no issues arise in testing or use thus far. It was available to distributors beginning in February 2020. It is available in all of Laticrete's base grout colors.

As to Laticrete's grout color #18 Sauterne, this is probably named after a wine that is yellow/amber in color, which would seem to connect with the photo that tile expert @bill_vincent posted earlier in this thread of its selection with a dark yellow tile scheme. Online the Sauterne looks white in most photos, but I believe that the #44 Bright White is the correct selection for a marble look-alike tile such as Porcelanosa's Thassos.

We had previously used Bostik white grout on a bathroom installation with Happy Floors tile and have had a terrible time keeping this grout clean. Hopefully the Spectralock 1 will be a relief. Some people in other threads recommend doing a silver colored grout with white tile to cut back on maintenance, but this wouldn't look the best for our installation. As mentioned above, straight epoxy can have some serious issues including yellowing with exposure to UV rays and disintegration with the use of enzymatic no-rinse cleaners. There also seems to be a problem with epoxy grout developing a haze in time.

I'll be looking for a cleaner and a sealer to use with our previous Bostik grout installation but am hoping that Spectralock 1 will live up to its claims of not needing sealant.

Hi Silverlined, how did this go? We are looking to use the Spectralock 1, and would love any feedback from someone who's used it. We'll be doing Daltile 1x1 in Biscuit (so its a lot of lines) and I want to use something that will be easy to maintain.

@J M We did not use Spectralock 1 grout in our kitchen because we found out that it is not intended for use around food preparation areas. So, its use is rather limited.

Instead, our installers used Mapei Ultracolor Plus FA (which I will hereafter refer to for brevity just as "Mapei," although this is only one of the family of Mapei grout types) which has some of the features of longevity of epoxy but isn't an epoxy grout. The Mapei was water-based, so shouldn't yellow. It is also rapid-setting, so the installers must be very skilled with it and only do small portions at a time, or else you can end up with a mess as the Mapei can harden over the tile and be very difficult to remove.

My one complaint with my installation was that the installers used too much water and removed too much of the grout as it was setting, so the grout level is a little low. It's not bad, but there's nothing that can be done to fix this aside from taking the grout completely out and re-doing it, at least according to Mapei customer service. Doing that could damage the tile, so I'm going to live with it. The grout needs to have at least 1/2 depth of the tile to which it can adhere, and after it is cured, it won't stick to the previous layer of grout unless it has those sides of the tile to help with adhesion, or so says Mapei's customer service. I would have preferred the grout to be nearly level with the tile, which is the standard set forth for this grout in the instructions, but I ended up with some noticeable edges of the tile showing, even beyond the beveled top edge of the tile by a small amount. Since it has been installed, I've barely noticed the problem, so it will probably only come back to haunt me when I am cleaning the grout and need to get the extra dirt out that falls into the deeper-than-desired depressions.

This Mapei grout doesn't require a sealer, but it can be sealed which I plan to do, probably with some Laticrete product. I have a lot of respect for Laticrete's technological advancements, but in my instance, the Mapei was recommended by the people who laid the tile, and I am thus far happy with it. One more note on the application, I provided the tile people with several dozen, new sponges to use on our job so they could feel free to wipe away on the grout since it was a rapid-set product, but they ended up using their own very water-heavy sponging system that was overkill for this grout.

Thank you so so much for the detailed review! This is super helpful - I appreciate it. Will look into Maipei. Still leaning Spectralock 1 since it will be for the bathroom, but a little worried since its so new.

@xty g (z4) any chance can see the avalanche sample board?

@J M did you end up with the Spectralock and if so, how's it holding up? Any yellowing or other issues? Also wondering if installation was troublesome. I don't think my tiler typically uses epoxy so i'm nervous to go that route. Thanks!