Should I seal our grout?

[Tvflguy]

We have a 10 year old TV home with nice ceramic floor tile in laundry, kitchen, and both bathrooms. Over the years the lighter color grout has darkened. I bought a grout cleaner and it’s looking great. I’m afraid that if I don’t seal the grout that it may dirty-up again.
I seem to recall some negatives about sealing. Any suggestions out there?

[villagetinker]

Yes seal the grout but be very careful what you use, I like GroutShield, send me a pm and we can discuss over the phone.

[mbene]

We have a 10 year old TV home with nice ceramic floor tile in laundry, kitchen, and both bathrooms. Over the years the lighter color grout has darkened. I bought a grout cleaner and it’s looking great. I’m afraid that if I don’t seal the grout that it may dirty-up again.
I seem to recall some negatives about sealing. Any suggestions out there?

What cleaner did you use?

[CFrance]

We have a 10 year old TV home with nice ceramic floor tile in laundry, kitchen, and both bathrooms. Over the years the lighter color grout has darkened. I bought a grout cleaner and it’s looking great. I’m afraid that if I don’t seal the grout that it may dirty-up again.
I seem to recall some negatives about sealing. Any suggestions out there?
We had light colored grout in kitchen/dining area/living/bath rooms that looked horrible after a year. We hired a company to stain and seal the grout. They also did the grout in our Roman shower. That was probably 10 or so years ago. The difference was amazing. Cleaning the floor was so much easier. Unfortunately, the owner passed away, so I cannot make a recommendation, other than to say it was well worth the price ($1100 in 2014).

[asianthree]

New builds have a different grout system, that no longer requires sealer. It’s built into the grout. I spilled some blue color on a section with left over tile under my desk in the garage and it didn’t change the light grout color at all.

[CFrance]

New builds have a different grout system, that no longer requires sealer. It’s built into the grout. I spilled some blue color on a section with left over tile under my desk in the garage and it didn’t change the light grout color at all.
That may be true for new builds, but OP has a ten-year-old house, so is looking for solutions for that type of grout.

[villagetinker]

Grout Shield is actually a COLORED sealer (looks like paint), you order the same color as the original grout. I did our entire house floor about 5-6 years ago, and this product has worked well and held up well. Also, the color matched so well that I actually missed a few locations which changed color when wet, so I had to do some touch up. MAPEI also makes a similar product I used this in the lanai when I tiled the floor, and this seems to work well also.

[PoolBrews]

Homes that are 10 years old are right on the line of when they started using epoxy grout, which does not need a sealer. In fact, if you use a sealer on this type of grout it will peel up over time and look terrible as it can't bond to the grout.

My home was built in 2016 and has epoxy grout. An easy way to check is put a drop of water on your grout. If it remains beaded up on the grout, it's epoxy. If it soaks in, it's not. Any good grout cleaning company can check this for you.