Painting tiles.

[Manchesterhistorygirl]

We've not long moved house and the kitchen is a lovely white shaker style with wooden tops, but somebody painted the tiles green! How can I make them look better? Can I paint them?

The walls are magnolia (actually the whole house is) and I'm currently lusting after farrow and ball paints. It's a light and airy kitchen, but these tiles are hideous. They are bile green.

Bump? Anyone?

Painted tiles can look a bit ropey unless it's done really well so it would depend on how well they've been prepped and painted in the first place. Effectively, you'll be painting over paint, not tiles, so treat it as that. A really light sand just to key the surface, a primer and then 2 or 3 coats of gloss, really thinly applied with a sponge roller. Use a small brush to get into the grout lines as you go along. Drips or brush marks will look terrible in gloss, it's not very forgiving, so if the current paint job (aside from colour) isn't up to much I'd seriously consider re-tiling.
Also, if you're going for a colour, rather than white, you'll want to paint the grout lines in. Do this with a brush before you paint the colour on then try to roller without pushing paint into the lines, tidy up with a small brush after you've done the main colour. Looks a bit odd if the colour runs all over the grout.
I always see painted tiles as a temporary fix. All the Farrow & Ball paint in the world won't make up for badly painted tiles. Would you consider buying cheaper paint and using the saved money towards new tiles?

I painted tiles in my old kitchen and they came up great, my tip would be don't rush!

Gave tiles really good clean to removed freeze etc, used a tile primer and a small sponge gloss roller then done three Coates of tile paint in chosen colour, I found thin Coates applied with the roller worked best and leave lots of drying time in between, mine lasted well and didn't chip

I wonder could you strip the paint off the tiles. You might like whatever is beneath.

I've decided to take them off and plaster instead, I seriously doubt there's anything nice under the paint.