I live in the basement and the tiles in my drop ceiling are so annoying there the normal whatever material they are and i have dark carpeting and i guess our house sucks because I have to vacuum all the time because ill look down and there will be white specks all over the floor which im guessing is coming from the tiles from when people walk upstairs. So i want to replace them with a material that wont do that.
Sounds like the tiles are crumbling and need to be stablised. Take out the tiles and give them a coat of a water based glue such as PVA diluted 3 parts water 1 part PVA. Let it dry well and paint with a water based paint to a colour of you choice.The tiles are probably getting damp, this usually causes problems with them but this will fix it for a while.
hopefully they are the drop in tiles. if that's the case you can replace them with tiles that are fiberglass plastic coated tiles from home depot or lowe's. i have been using that type of tile in EVERY room in my house. some of them are over 35 years old and are still in place. you can take them down and wash the and scrub them clean using 409 Formula. they' re lightweight and water wont hurt them unlike the cardboard kind that when get wet they stain. they only come in a few designs but are usually all acceptable. hey come in sheets of 2 X 4 that can then be cut easily to any size smaller than that. all my room are done in 2X2's. remember this is for dropped ceilings only. you ned about 4 inches between the real ceiling and the drop ceiling to be able to put the new tiles in. you need to figure out the square feet of the rooms ceiling . let's pretend it's a 10 X 10 room, that would equal 10 times 10 which would be 100 square feet of tile. good luck to ya.
Don't know about plastic, but there are plastic wrapped & melamine coated tiles which are used in hospital OR.s & labs since they are non porous & can be scrubbed. Some have gaskets along the edges which seal them to the grid to seal out dust. Probably not something from a home center but a big builder's supplier might special order them. Guessing a few bucks more than regular fiber lay in tiles. Best regards
