Which adhesives and grout should one use with mosaics?

There are a lot of great books out there on mosaics right now, but there are a lot of books that have misinformation. Choosing the right surface to work on, preparing that surface correctly, and using the right type of adhesives are really important. Depending on whether you are working on a wooden substrate, glass on glass, or cement substrate, each will take different type of adhesives.

In contemporary mosaic, most people choose to grout their pieces. Traditionally mosaics were not grouted. They were pieced very, very closely and left ungrouted, so some people working in a more traditional style or from an artistic standpoint choose not to grout their piece. But, I would say that most of the time you want to grout your piece unless you're going for a specific ancient look. Grout will help your pieces to hold together and certainly if it's an exterior piece or an architectural piece like a floor or something, it must be grouted.

Grout comes in many, many different colors. In our store we carry 25 and that's not even the whole color range. So there is a wide selection as far as grout color. I think that most people don't know what color to choose, so they just use white, but white is not as neutral as a lot of people feel like it might be. I generally encourage people to think outside the box when they are selecting their grout color and maybe choose the color that ties the background together or that accents some portion of their piece.

Most of the time you want to choose sanded grout. It's very discouraging when people are buying supplies for the first time over the Internet and the suppliers are not really specific about their products and I see a lot of people getting the wrong kind of grout for their project. I would say 95% of time you should go for sanded grout.