Nobody likes to open up their toilet lid to see stains and discoloration inside their toilet bowl. Before you clean up a stain, it’s a good idea to try and figure out what’s causing the stain to prevent it from reappearing. So what causes gray stains in toilet bowls?
Gray stains inside a toilet bowl are most often caused by a buildup of minerals coming from your water. While all water will have some mineral content, hard water pushes minerals through your water supply at a much faster rate. Additionally, you could have gray stains in your toilet bowl due to bacteria or fungus living in your toilet bowl.
Stains inside your toilet bowl aren’t always avoidable given what goes on in your bathroom, but you can certainly make some changes to avoid constantly having to deal with unpleasant stains.
What Causes Gray Stains In The Toilet Bowl?
A lot of stains that pop up inside your toilet bowl can be caused by a lack of cleanliness. Cleaning the inside of a toilet is a chore that no one likes to do, but of course, it helps you keep your toilet sparkling white and free of germs. When it comes to gray stains, the causes aren’t usually because you don’t clean your toilet enough.
Hard Water Mineral Buildup
A lot of people avoid trying to deal with hard water because they’re under the impression that hard water equals good water pressure. There is no correlation, and hard water can wreak a lot of havoc on your water-based appliances and even your skin and hair. When you flush your toilet, that hard water and all of its mineral content is swirling around your toilet bowl.
Minerals may be good for us, but they aren’t good for our toilet bowls. Calcium, for instance, tends to exist in pretty large quantities inside hard water. It can be really tough on a porcelain toilet, or any other toilet for that matter. It also damages sinks and bathtubs and makes appliances like your dishwasher and washing machine have to work even harder to get your things clean.
Calcium can turn the inside of the toilet bowl gray or even off-white, and the longer these minerals can fester in your toilet bowl, the harder it gets to remove these stains. Other minerals that exist in hard water can cause a multitude of other kinds of stains inside your toilet bowl.
Choosing The Wrong Cleaning Products
It can be really frustrating to meticulously clean your toilet only to have stubborn stains appear that won’t go away. Unfortunately, a lot of products that are marketed specifically for cleaning toilet bowls have way too many corrosive and unnecessary chemicals in them. You don’t need to bleach your toilet every time you clean it.
These chemicals may help kill some bacteria, but they aren’t good for the structural integrity of our toilets. Using these super strong toilet cleaners can also mean you’re essentially reinforcing the stain each time you attempt to scrub it away.
Unwanted Germs, Fungi, Or Bacteria Buildup
Your toilet bowl comes into contact with a lot of organisms and microorganisms are given the nature of what it’s used for. It also retains a lot of moisture, and it also deals with a lot of warm air coming into contact with the toilet water that lives inside the bowl. Bad bacteria love moisture, as do fungus and mold; all things you don’t want in your toilet.
If gray stains are because of things like fungus or bacteria, they will usually appear as a darker gray ring around the interior of your toilet bowl. If the staining appears to be blurry or fuzzy, it could be mold, and mold continues to grow until it’s eliminated.
How to Get Rid of Gray Stains in Toilet Bowl
Before you do any kind of investigation into your toilet’s stain situation in an effort to clean it appropriately, it’s always a good idea to turn your toilet’s water valve off. You want to be able to get rid of the unsavory toilet water that’s inside the bowl as you clean so you’re not just simply covering up the problem with a cleaner.
Clean Your Toilet Bowl (The Right Way)
Don’t go reaching for the bleach to try and get rid of gray stains. You want to opt for a simpler approach that will still get the stains out of your toilet without creating the conditions for them to come back.
Pour a generous amount of vinegar into your toilet bowl. Wait a couple of minutes before slowly pouring in some baking soda. You’ll want to do a very thorough scrub of the inside of your toilet bowl before letting the mixture soak into your bowl for at least fifteen to twenty minutes. For some really difficult stains, you can also add some lemon juice to the bowl.
A good flush will rid your toilet bowl of the mixture while also, hopefully, washing away the gray stains. If you notice that there are some really stubborn marks, you can use a pumice stone to scrub these stains harder without damaging your toilet bowl.
Install A Water Softener
As the name would imply, a water softener helps to stop hard water from continuing to flow through your home. Water softeners can be a little bit pricey but are well worth the cost. Hard water, over time, can erode the integrity of your home’s plumbing, which is a must more expensive repair to have to take care of.
How To Avoid Gray Stains In Toilet Bowl
Once you manage to eliminate the gray stains in your toilet bowl, it’s time to make sure you manage your bathroom’s cleanliness to avoid having those stains come back. You should clean your toilet bowl at least once a week to try and stop gray stains, as well as other potential stains, from coming back.
Use Gentle, Homemade Cleaners
You can ditch the store-bought toilet cleaners for a couple of items you likely have at home, and you won’t be sacrificing a glistening white toilet. As mentioned, baking soda and vinegar are the best things to have around your home for cleaning your toilet and so many other surfaces of your home.
These products are inexpensive and gentle but are able to break through some of the worst stains. After you do the deep clean of your toilet bowl, a little squeeze of lemon juice can help give your toilet that signature, fresh, clean smell without an aerosol spray that just pumps more chemicals into your bathroom.
Improve Your Bathroom’s Ventilation
If your bathroom’s environment remains too humid for too long, it can cause water damage to become much worse. Humidity also makes it much easier for a lot of really gross and potentially harmful things to grow inside your bathroom.
When you have hot showers or baths, you should open a window or keep your bathroom fan running both during and afterward. The hot air needs to be removed from the environment so none of the aforementioned microorganisms can survive. Additionally, you’ll want to keep your bathroom vents clean and clear and make sure your air ducts are in proper working order.