How To Eliminate Shower Mold

When you live in a humid or tropical environment, mold can be a problem in areas that get wet often or areas that don't dry quickly. Shower mold drives me nuts and it's a frequent complaint I have in far too many hotel showers that I've seen, even higher end hotels.

For my own shower, which often gets used so often that it doesn't always have time to fully dry out between uses, mold was an occasional problem. Sure, we could clean it away with weekly cleanings but little bits would tend to grow back shortly after. It wasn't a huge problem but any mold is unacceptable to me.

Our bathroom is a good size and has several windows to let air in and out but that wasn't enough. So I tried putting a fan that blows on the shower floor so that we could quickly dry the shower after each use, but that didn't work either (and it was a big fan!).

We also tried various "green" techniques like spraying a 50/50 water and white vinegar solution on the shower floor after taking a shower to prevent mold growth from starting, but nothing stopped the mold.

Then it hit me that the grout lines in our tile shower probably hadn't been sealed in a long time (maybe never), certainly not since we bought the house.

So I bought some grout and tile sealer. There are a variety of options and it's possible that any would work but I settled on grout sealer from the company TileLab which has Microban in it. Microban is an antimicrobial additive in the grout sealer which should help with mold growth (and other nasty things from growing).

The process for applying it was simple. You must first clean your shower thoroughly, getting rid of any existing mold in the shower. Then let it dry completely. Tip: put a fan on it for a few hours to speed that process up.

Once dry, you simply spray the product onto the grout joints and let it dry. If you get too much on you can wipe any excess off. I sprayed the entire floor of the shower and even several feet up the walls (just to be safe). A few hours later I applied a second coat to finish off the can, though this isn't listed as being necessary.

Let it dry for at least 24 hours (we gave it 48 hours) and it should be good to go. This isn't a replacement for proper shower cleaning but since we've done this we haven't see any mold in our shower, even when we've had days on end of rainy weather. That's a result!