Patio & Outdoor Tile Cleaning

The first instinct is to rent a pressure washer and blast it, and that's where a lot of patios get damaged. The narrow, high-pressure tip that finally shifts the black stuff is also strong enough to erode grout right out of the joints and to pit softer stone like travertine and slate. You end up with a cleaner-looking patio and grout lines that are now dished out, cracked, or missing, which lets water get underneath and makes next year's growth worse. People trade a dirty patio for a failing one.

Back off the pressure to protect the grout and the wand barely touches the algae and mildew that have rooted into the surface. So you're stuck between too much pressure and too little. Meanwhile the household cleaners don't carry outdoors well either. Bleach lightens the growth so the patio looks better for a week, but it doesn't scrub anything loose, the roots and grime are still down in the grout, and it comes right back. On stone, bleach and acidic cleaners can also discolor or etch the surface.

And a plain scrub with a deck brush moves grime around the top of the tile without pulling it out of the porous grout, which is where the darkness and the slickness actually live. The patio dries and looks about the same, just wetter for a while.

Outdoor tile lives in a wet, dirty environment, and that changes what's growing on it. Algae, moss, and mildew need moisture and they get plenty from rain, sprinklers, and pool splash, so they colonize the porous grout and any textured tile first because those spots hold water longest. That biological film is what turns a deck green and, more importantly, what makes it dangerously slick. A slippery pool deck isn't just ugly, it's a fall waiting to happen. On top of the living stuff, weathered grime, pollen, and windblown soil pack into the same grout lines and go dark.

The materials outside also tend to be the fragile ones. Pool decks and patios are often travertine, slate, quarry tile, or unglazed pavers, all of them porous and some of them soft. That's the exact combination, embedded biological growth plus a surface that can't take aggressive pressure or acid, that makes outdoor tile tricky. You have to hit the growth and the grime hard enough to lift them but stay gentle enough that the joints and the stone survive.

We clean outdoor tile with controlled buffing instead of brute pressure. A cleaning solution goes down on the surface, then a rotary floor buffer scrubs it into the grout and the tile texture to break down the algae, moss, mildew, and packed grime, working the growth loose from the pores rather than blasting it deeper. The floor is then rinsed and the loosened growth and dirty water are mopped away. The scrubbing is controlled, so it lifts the film out of the joints without cutting the grout away, and on travertine, slate, and other stone we keep the chemistry pH-appropriate so nothing gets etched. The result is a deck that's actually clean down in the grout, not just rinsed on top, and a lot less slick underfoot.

Because we're scrubbing the biological growth loose and rinsing it off rather than just bleaching it pale, it stays gone longer than a quick blast-and-hope job. We'll look at your specific patio, whether it's glazed tile, travertine, slate, or quarry pavers, and clean it the way that material needs. It's covered by our 100% Satisfaction or It's FREE guarantee, there's currently $45 off tile cleaning, and same-day appointments are often available. Find your local Safe-Dry or call 1-800-SAFE-DRY.

We walk through the full deep-cleaning process on our how tile & grout cleaning works page, and every job is backed by our 100% satisfaction guarantee.