Glaze chips fill well and disappear. Damage through the body of the tile, or a tile that sounds hollow when tapped, needs replacing rather than patching.
Decide which problem you have
Tap the tile with a fingertip or a coin. A solid sound means the tile is well bonded and a surface repair will last. A hollow sound means it has debonded from the adhesive underneath, and any filler will fail as the tile flexes.
Then look at the depth. A chip that has taken the glaze but left the body intact is a cosmetic repair. A chip that goes into the body, or a crack running across the tile, is structural and will grow.
Repairing a glaze chip
- Clean the chip thoroughly with isopropyl alcohol. Any grease or dust prevents adhesion, and this is the step most repairs fail on.
- Remove any loose fragments with a soft brush.
- Mix two part epoxy and tint it with pigment to match. Mix a little more than you need and test on an offcut or an inconspicuous corner.
- Apply slightly proud of the surface with a toothpick or a small palette knife.
- Let it cure fully, which usually means overnight rather than the minimum on the packet.
- Level with fine wet and dry paper, working up to a very fine grit, then polish.
Matching the colour
Tiles are rarely a flat single colour. Most have subtle variation, and matching the average rather than any single point gives the least visible result. Mix in daylight, not under artificial light, and let a test blob cure before judging, because epoxy usually darkens slightly as it sets.
For speckled or patterned tiles, fill with the base colour, cure, then add the pattern on top with a fine brush and a little acrylic paint before sealing with clear epoxy.
Matching the finish
A colour match that gets the sheen wrong still stands out. Gloss tiles need a final clear coat polished smooth. Matt tiles need the repair knocked back with very fine abrasive until it stops reflecting. Textured tiles are hardest, and stippling the surface with a cocktail stick while the epoxy is still tacky reproduces the texture better than any tool.
When to replace
Replacement means cutting out the grout, breaking the tile out from the centre outward, scraping the bed flat and setting a new tile. It is a real job but it is the only durable answer for cracked or debonded tiles. If you have spare tiles from the original installation this is straightforward. If you do not, take a fragment to a supplier before starting, because discovering there is no match halfway through is the worst point to find out.
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