Desk Chairs and Mats - What's Good

shdwcaster

For Christmas last year, my wife gave me the gift of a brand new office chair to replace the IKEA chair which I've been using for the past sixteen years. The chair itself (one of those X-Chair things) is great. The mat that I got to roll on in my home office, on the other hand, is bamboo garbage which started falling apart and shedding splinters in a week.

Reading reviews of chair mats on Amazon is giving me a headache. "Works great", "Cracked and fell apart in two months", "Shattered into 2 million tiny glass shards after 6 months on carpet".

So to you, dear MSTT readers, I ask your recommendations.

I'm not looking to spend a new console's worth of money on a mat (although if a $500 glass mat will last 10 years, I'd consider it), but I'd like something that's going to last more than a few months. My office is on medium pile carpet, and the chair and I weigh in the neighborhood of 300 lbs combined weight.

Trajan45

I've used a mat from here for over a decade: https://thematstore.com/wood-laminate-snapmat.php

I've tried the clear plastic stuff and it sucks. My roommate had one with bamboo strips and not only did it fall apart quickly, it also felt like speed bumps rolling around. I got the largest square one in cherry. It's expensive but worth it if you plan on using it for years.

Mugsley

This may be crazy but you could look for remnants of click together laminate flooring and make a chair mat that way.

My wife has a plastic one that has held up so far but I won't recommend it.

Shadowfire

Usually if the click together stuff isn't pressed up against walls, it doesn't take much to click them apart again.

Trajan45

I was going to try that for my SO, as I had a TON of leftover bamboo flooring from doing my house. But it ended up being easier to order her a mat like mine. My original thought was some sort of thin plywood board, then gluing the bamboo planks to it. But all the cuts that would need to be done, not knowing how well exposed bamboo plank would hold up, as well as the overall weight of that beast, was just too much.