Free Sample
The Complete Handbook of Office & Chair Mats
A practical reference for professionals, buyers, and facility managers who need to select, install, maintain, and profit from office and chair mats.
by Alumigogo Books
Chapter 1: Understanding Office & Chair Mats
The office and chair mat is a deliberately unglamorous product. It is a flat sheet of rigid or semi-rigid plastic placed on the floor beneath a seated work position. Its two jobs are simple to state and surprisingly complicated to do well: protect the flooring underneath it, and allow the chair to roll smoothly and predictably across its surface. When a mat does both jobs without cracking, curling, sliding, or becoming a trip hazard, it is effectively invisible. When it fails, it becomes the most complained-about object in the room.
To understand what a chair mat actually is, it helps to start with the problem it solves. A typical office chair on castors concentrates the full weight of a seated person, usually 120 to 250 pounds for a single user, onto four or five small wheels. Each wheel has a contact patch roughly the size of a thumbnail. The pressure under that wheel can easily reach several hundred pounds per square inch. On a hard floor like tile, concrete, or hardwood, that concentrated pressure acts like a slow grinder. Every time the user pushes back from the desk, shifts sideways, or swivels, the castors drag tiny particles of grit and dust across the surface. Over weeks and months, that abrasive action creates permanent scuff marks, fine scratches, and in severe cases, worn grooves in traffic lanes. On carpet, the problem is different but equally destructive. The castor wheels press the carpet pile flat,