Most grouting quotes in Singapore say "epoxy" and stop there. Epoxy is a family, not a product, and several things sold alongside it are not epoxy at all. Here is the whole map, and two questions that settle it in one message.
You do not need to learn any of this to protect yourself. Send these two questions to whoever quoted you, including us. The answers separate the categories on their own.
A contractor using real epoxy can answer both in one line. If the answer is vague, that is the answer.
This comes before chemistry, colour or budget, and it is the thing most quotes never mention. Grout has to physically fit the gap.
| Joint width | What can go in | What that means |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mm and above | Epoxy, or cementitious | Full choice. Mapei Kerapoxy is specified for 3 mm and above |
| 2 to 3 mm | Cementitious only | Mapei Ultracolor Plus is rated 2 to 20 mm. Epoxy will not penetrate properly |
| under 2 mm | Neither | Nothing we hold is suitable. The honest answer is to say so before starting, not after |
Small format tiles are where this bites. Mosaic strips, kit-kat and finger tiles are routinely laid at 2 mm, which rules epoxy out on the very surfaces people most want it. Any quote for a mosaic feature wall that promises epoxy without anyone having measured a joint is a promise made before the facts.
A rule held across one grout line, photographed, settles this in ten seconds. We ask for that photo before quoting small format tile, and if the joints measure under the minimum we say so and there is nothing to pay.
These are genuine chemistry, mixed on site, curing by reaction rather than drying.
| Type | Where it is normal | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 2-part epoxy | Europe, Italy | Resin plus hardener, filler already blended in. Mapei Kerapoxy, Litokol Starlike EVO, Kerakoll Fugalite, Sopro DFX |
| 3-part epoxy | USA, Australia, Gulf | Resin, hardener and a separate coloured filler. One liquid pack serves every colour. Laticrete SPECTRALOCK PRO, Ardex EG 15 |
| Coloured quartz epoxy | China mass market, premium elsewhere | Surface coloured sintered quartz, so nothing bleeds into porcelain, glass or stone. Known in China as 环氧彩砂. Mapei Kerapoxy CQ, Starlike EVO |
| Furan resin | US and Indian industrial | Reactive resin but not epoxy. Beats epoxy against organic acids, so dairies and breweries. Cannot be water cleaned. Never residential |
This is where a cheaper quote usually differs, and no customer can tell by looking. None of these are bad products. They are simply not what "epoxy" means, and the price gap is explained by the category rather than by anyone being generous.
Laticrete SPECTRALOCK PRO is a 3-part epoxy. Laticrete SPECTRALOCK 1 is a pre-mixed single component. Same family name, different product class. Family names are marketing. Class numbers are not.
Standards are not the same everywhere, which is why a datasheet from one market can look impressive and mean something different here.
| Market | Standard | Epoxy class | How it compares |
|---|---|---|---|
| Europe | EN 13888 | RG | One class, no subdivision. The baseline |
| International | ISO 13007-3 | RG | Effectively identical to EN |
| USA | ANSI A118.3 | A118.3 | Structurally different. ANSI splits grout across five specs and makes water cleanability a defining requirement |
| China | JC/T 1004-2017 | RG I / RG II | Aligned with RG but subdivided into solvent type and water based |
| Japan | none found | none | Tiles and adhesives are covered. No grout standard located, so "Japanese standard" on a grout datasheet is worth a question |
Mapei Kerapoxy carries EN 13888 class RG and EN 12004 class R2T. Mapei Ultracolor Plus is CG2 F W A, a cementitious class where the W means reduced water absorption and the A means high abrasion resistance.
A great deal of the world's tile joint material is Chinese, and the category there is enormous. It is worth understanding properly rather than dismissing, because the honest picture is more interesting than the lazy one.
China has a large consumer category for joint filling, sold under the general name 美缝剂. It splits into several real chemistries: two-part epoxy in twin cartridges, coloured quartz epoxy, polyaspartic polyurea, and hydrogenated epoxy developed specifically to resist yellowing. The coloured quartz category alone runs to thousands of listings on the domestic wholesale platforms, and the sellers include Davco, Sika, Nippon and Mapei alongside a long tail of unnamed factories.
Not mainly the price. The bigger draw is that the popular consumer formats come in twin cartridges with a mixing nozzle, applied with a caulking gun. That removes the two hardest parts of epoxy grouting in one go: weighing the ratio accurately, and beating the pot life. A crew with no training can produce a result that looks excellent on day one.
It also arrives with no published class certification in English, which means there is nothing for a customer to check it against.
Country of manufacture is not the issue. Mapei makes epoxy grout at Guangzhou in China. Buying Kerapoxy through Singapore distribution may well be buying Chinese-made product. The China cost base is already in the price of the branded material.
What differs is everything around the tub:
Chinese trade press has also reported quality problems in the domestic budget end, including testing that found flexural strength well under the required minimum. That is a report about the unbranded tail of a large market, not about a country, and the branded Chinese-made product from a major manufacturer is a different thing entirely.
Singapore's Housing and Building Act imposes warranties on the contractor that cannot be signed away, 2 years, and 6 years for major defects, whatever material was used. If a joint fails, there is no practical recourse against an anonymous factory. All the liability sits with the contractor and none of the risk went anywhere. That is the real reason to care what is in the tub.
Not because the others are bad. Several products named on this page are excellent, and some of them we would happily use if our supply chain carried them.
Knowing one product properly is worth more than knowing five roughly. We know Kerapoxy's pot life, its mixing ratio, its joint limits, its cure schedule and its colour range without looking any of them up, and we know how it behaves when the room is hot and the batch is too big. That knowledge is what stops a joint curing soft, and it does not transfer between brands.
It also means the batch number on your warranty certificate traces to a receipt we can show you, and that when we say a joint is 3 mm minimum, it is the manufacturer's requirement rather than our preference.
The honest limits of that choice, since they are real: our range is what our supplier holds. We have turned down colours that only exist in another product line, and quoted a four month lead time rather than substitute something similar. We would rather lose the colour than swap the product without telling you.
Nothing, unless you are comparing quotes. If you are, ask the two questions at the top of this page. Then compare on three things rather than on price alone:
If a cheaper quote answers all three well, take it. Usually one of the three is the gap, and that gap is the price difference.
Pick your rooms and tile sizes and get a fixed price, itemised, with no form to fill in first. Grout is priced by metres of joint, so a 300 × 300 floor costs about twice a 600 × 600 floor of the same size. The calculator does that arithmetic for you.
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