A rubber floor mat offers innumerable advantages. Below, we’ve compiled a list of 50 types of places that can benefit from a rubber floor mat.
Residential Applications
1. Hallways: Household hallways are often floored with carpets, hardwoods, or other precious materials. But carpets are a pain to clean. And hardwood floors are easily damaged, costing a fortune to replace. A rubber runner mat is designed for corridors, and it works well for protecting the subflooring of a home’s hallway.
2. Front, Back, and Side Doors: Decorative rubber mats guard your home against the intrusion of moisture and debris. And by using decorative mats, you’re keeping your entryways stylish, all while protecting your home.
3. Kitchens: Elastomers have a naturally high coefficient of friction, which—paired with the material’s natural resistance for water—creates an excellent slip-resistant surface. The preferred raw ingredient used in kitchen mats is nitrile, a grease-resistant rubber.
4. Pet Kennels: Whether a dog kennel is inside or outside, a rubberized mat will offer your pet comfort by protecting it from cold, hard subfloors. Not to mention, as a material, rubber is highly malleable, so your pet’s paws will also be much more comfortable. And cleaning rubber floor mats is a breeze, so the debris that good ol’ Rex leaves behind won’t be a burden to remove. A rubber floor mat is a simple but meaningful way to show your pets that you love them.
5. Recreation Spaces: A recreation or family space within the home is great for strengthening familial bonds while having wholesome fun. Installing a smooth rubber floor mat protects the family from injury should any good-spirited, rough-and-tumble play arise. And it also resurfaces the floor with a soft layer that’s comfortable to stand, sit, and lay on. A rubber floor mat is a good way of protecting you, your family, and your floors while relaxing in the recreation space.
6. Home Gyms: Virtually every commercial gym is partially or wholly surfaced with rubber materials. It’s obvious why. With all that heavy equipment being thrust around, gyms often experience subflooring damage. Installing a rubber floor mat between your gym equipment and your subflooring is the go-to solution for protecting your flooring, as well as your equipment.
7. Porch and Patio Decks: Typically, a rubber floor mat is highly resistant to a multitude of extreme weather conditions. But a floor mat’s degree of resistance depends on the material it’s made of—the type of rubber it’s made of. So by installing the correct type of rubber floor mat on your home’s deck, your deck is protected against harsh weather, and you’re less likely to slip if it’s wet.
8. Rooms that Need Soundproofing: Rubber naturally absorbs sound. While not as effective as some other materials at soundproofing, long rubber mats can still be used as weaker sound proofers for applications that require only a light degree of soundproofing. Rubber adhesives are a staple of any rubber mat company, so you can easily install long rubber mats yourself.
9. Garage: The cold and hard concrete that floors most garages often creates a dreary atmosphere. By using rolled rubber matting, you’ll make your garage more welcoming, unlocking your garage’s potential for being any kind of space your lifestyle needs.
10. Under Heavy Appliances: Washers and dryers tend to buckle, bounce, and sway. While this isn’t anything out of the ordinary, consider the long-term effects this constant movement could have on your delicate subflooring. After all, laundry machines are very heavy. By installing small rubber mats beneath your washer and dryer, you’re essentially ensuring that your floors will outlast your heavy appliances. And not to mention, since rubberized mats naturally absorb sound, you’ll dampen the noise that your heavy appliances make while they operate.
Commercial Applications
11. Entrances to Store Fronts: Store fronts experience heavy foot-traffic daily. But with heavy foot-traffic comes the back-and-forth transportation of debris and moisture in and out of the building. A rubber floor mat placed at the entrance of your store greatly reduces the amount of debris that enters your store, keeping your business looking cleaner and sharper. What’s more, you could even get decorative rubber mats which, while functioning the same, enhance your storefront’s aesthetic appeal.
12. Cashier Stations: Being a cashier isn’t easy—especially when you’re always on your feet. Standing all day often leaves your feet aching, and it can make a cashier’s life a lot harder than it should be. Because rubber is malleable, rubber mats are anti-fatiguing. Installing a rubber floor mat where cashiers stand is simple and efficient, and it should be an easy decision for any store owner.
13. Commercial Kitchens:
Nitrile is a synthetic rubber that’s known for its natural oil-resistance. Kitchen mats made of nitrile are the perfect commercial rubber mats for bustling kitchens—where there’s enough to worry about already.
14. Valet-Parking Stations: Like cashiers, valets are on their feet all day. If anything, valets probably have it tougher—after all, they often must run. Install a rubber floor mat where valets spend most of his shift to relieve them of the aches associated with prolonged standing.
15. Restrooms: Slip and fall hazards are commonplace in restrooms. Placing a large or small rubber mat in a customer restroom greatly decreases the chances of someone slipping and falling.
16. Grocery Stores: Excessive moisture is a normal thing in grocery stores. But it’s unbecoming to have shoppers wading through puddles of water or—worse—accidentally slipping and falling. Long rubber mats are ideal for securing a grocery store’s many aisles, and they even help to clearly mark walkways.
17. Play Areas: When children play, tripping and tumbling is common. Installing a rubber floor mat where kids play—whether it be at a daycare, gym, or home—is a great way to protect children from potentially serious injury.
18. Commercial Gym Flooring: Commercial mats are standard in gyms, especially commercial gyms. The heavy equipment in gyms endangers subflooring, so rubber floor mats are virtually a necessity.
19. Food Courts: Food courts in malls and other public places see heavy foot-traffic every day. Especially when large quantities of food are involved, it becomes imperative to emplace rubber floor mats throughout the area. For food courts, rubber is the best material for surfacing since it’s anti-slip and is very easy to clean.
20. Laundromats: Decked with multiple stories of laundry machines, laundromats are places where slippage is common. With rubber floor mats, customers in a laundromat are afforded increased protection against many falling hazards. And of course, customers are on their feet quite often in laundromats, so it doesn’t hurt to give them some anti-fatigue flooring, right?
Industrial Applications
21. Workstations: Like a cashier’s or valet’s station, workstations are places where workers are on their feet most—if not all—of the time. Rubberized floor mats are an easy way to upgrade any workstation.
22. Assembly Lines: Like workstations, assembly lines usually have workers on their feet the entire time. A rubber floor mat will do the trick.
23. Walkways: Walkways see constant foot-traffic, and they can be dangerous to traverse when there’s heavy machinery operating nearby. A rubber runner mat extends throughout the length of the walkway and defines the walkable area, making it clear which pathways are safe to travel.
24. Under Heavy Machinery: Heavy machinery can be extremely damaging to subflooring—even concrete. By placing quality mats beneath your business’s heavy machinery, you protect your subflooring against the damage that the machines often inflict onto floors.
25. Entryways: Like homes and stores, industrial entryways should have small rubber mats or long rubber mats to stop unwanted debris from entering the building’s interior.
26. Stairs: As innocuous as they seem in everyday life, stairs can actually be quite dangerous. Slipping, tripping, and falling aren’t that rare. And because stairs are elevated from the ground, the injuries we sustain from falling down stairs are often much more serious than the injuries we get from regular falls. Rubber stair treads are perfect for stairs, adding traction to every step a person takes.
27. Break Rooms: Break rooms are something of a haven. After all, they’re where employees take their sacred breaks. Thoughtfully placing a rubber floor mat in your business’s break room is a subtle way of showing your employees that you appreciate them.
28. Warehouses: Warehouse floors are usually made of concrete. And as invincible as we tend to make concrete out to be, it isn’t. Not even close. Chips, cracks, and scratches are common. Chemical damage happens all the time. Plus, it’s easily damaged by moisture. Protect your concrete flooring using commercial mats. And, rubber is the best choice.
29. Industrial Shelves: In industrial settings, shelves are often packed with heavy, hazardous objects. By lining your industrial shelves with customized rubber mats, you’re protecting your shelves from the potential damage that could easily occur.
30. Offices, Conference Rooms, and Waiting Rooms: Enhance the professional appearance of an office, a conference room, or a waiting room with a black rubber mat, red rubber mat, blue rubber mat, or white rubber mat. There’s a lot you can do when it comes to rubber floor mats for offices. While protecting your building’s subflooring, you’re also maintaining a stylish, professional appearance—sure to impress your clients.
Public Locations
31. Museums: Food traffic is the business of museums. So, it makes sense to protect a museum’s flooring using a rubber floor mat. Rubber runner mats are also useful for limiting walkways so that a museum can streamline its visitors along intended paths.
32. Zoos: Zoo animals need water. And they aren’t exactly tidy about it. By installing a rubber floor mat on an exhibit’s viewing area, visitors are much less likely to slip and fall from water that seeps from the exhibit. Because the areas outside of exhibits are sometimes oddly shaped, a rubber floor mat can be altered for a custom fit. Rubber floor mats are an indispensable asset to any zoo.
33. Libraries: Libraries are great and terrible places. They’re great because there’s so much greatness there for you to uncover. And they’re terrible because no matter how much you read, you will never be able to read all the great things. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try! Because so many people spend hours at a time reading in libraries, it makes sense for them to have a malleable flooring. Rubber matting is a winner when it comes to comfortability. And to spice things up, decorative rubber mats can be used to make these already great places look even better.
34. Schools: Schools are rich in potential for rubber-matting applications. Small rubber mats can be used to demarcate students’ seating arrangements. Rubber runner mats can be used to cover entire hallways. And rubber mat squares can be used to floor playgrounds, where children are prone to light injury.
35. Police Stations: Police stations should appear clean and sharp—like their officers. Because it’s so easy to clean rubber floor mats, a rubber floor mat is an excellent addition to any police station.
36. Public Pools: No running by the pool—a good, wise rule, but a rule that’s often broken regardless. Because rubber floor mats are anti-slip and shock-absorbing, installing rubber runner mats along the edges of a pool is a great way to substantially increase a pool’s safety.
37. Community Centers: For some reason, a community center just doesn’t seem complete without floor mats for its entryways. And—as if we need to say this—the best floor mats are made of rubber.
38. Crowded Events: Crowded events, like festivals and celebrations, are arenas for shoulder-to-shoulder combat. People shuffle around, bump into, and stagger each other left and right. Stumbling and falling is expected, but it can sometimes lead to serious injury—especially with so many people stomping about. So, floor mats for additional traction are a must; and nothing adds traction better than rubber.
39. The DMV: When writing his Inferno, Dante seemed to have forgotten the tenth circle of hell—the DMV. The DMV is the dreaded place that we’re all sent to at least once, and it’s at the DMV that we wonder whether being there is our punishment for a lifetime of transgressions. As terrible as the DMV is, having rubber runner mats installed over all the waiting areas would be a considerable improvement. I still wouldn’t come back voluntarily, but I’d be just a little less miserable. And hey, that means something.
40. Public Restroom: Let’s be honest. Public restrooms aren’t exactly the cleanest places. But they could be made a lot cleaner with additions of rubber matting. Seriously, cleaning rubber mats is much easier than cleaning most other types of flooring. A rubber floor mat is also anti-slip, so while keeping the public restroom cleaner, it also enhances safety—a two-for-one.
Travel and Transpiration
41. Bus Stations: With so many travelers standing around and coming in and out, a bus station is the perfect place for a well-chosen rubber floor mat.
42. Train Stations: Train-station platforms are dangerous places. One wrong stumble, and you might be face-to-face with giant yellow headlights. Having high-traction surfacing to prevent travelers from accidentally falling will likely save lives, and rubber floor mats are a top contender when it comes to preventing falls.
43. Airports: Airports would definitely benefit from the installation of rubber matting. With so many people jostling against each other while going from terminal to terminal, it makes sense to have a rubber floor mat at every location.
44. Inside of Buses: Bus aisles see considerable amounts of foot traffic. To better protect a bus’s flooring and to give travelers added footing, install a rubber runner mat.
45. Inside of Trains: Like buses, the interiors of transit trains see a lot of wear. With rubber mats installed, it’s much less likely that a train’s interior will be damaged. And of course, a rubber floor mat is easy to remove and clean.
46. Trucks and Freight Liners: Truck and freight-liner companies are concerned with two things and two things only: Get something from Point A to Point B, and get that thing to Point B in an acceptable condition. As a material, rubber naturally absorbs shock, so when a rubber floor mat lines the floor of a truck or a freight liner, all deliverables are sure to be in good condition.
47. Vans: Vans—whether they’re U-Hauls or Mercedes Sprinters—are vulnerable to interior damage. A rubber floor mat can be ordered as a custom matting online to fit all the corners of the van’s interior, protecting the vehicle’s flooring from potential damage.
48. Animal Transporters: Transporting livestock can be difficult and stressful for the animals being moved. To ameliorate their conditions and protect your equipment, use commercial rubber floor mats.
49. Boat Decks/Docks: Whether on the docks or decks, a strategically placed rubber floor mat will offer superlative slip resistance while withstanding the corrosive forces of the sea and sun. And with decorative rubber mats featuring witty humor or oceanic artwork, you can even add a hint of personal flair.
50. Vehicle Washes: To keep things moving—whether they’re people, goods, or livestock—we rely on cars. But with great use comes great responsibility: Cars need to be washed all the time. Custom rubber mats will upgrade any washing location, giving it a clean and professional appearance. Whether you use a large or small rubber mat depends on the size of the area you’re trying to protect. Long rubber mats are better suited for customers, while a rubber floor mat is great for vehicle-washing attendants.
Where Can You Use Rubber Mats?
It’s obvious by now that a rubber floor mat can be used practically anywhere. There are plenty of types of rubber mats. Each one has its own niche, so certain types of places fare better with a certain type of mat. Whether it’s a zoo or an airport, a bus or train, or in the heat or rain, a rubber floor mat always has its use.
