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
non-fiction
The unbiased, engineering-minded reference for choosing, installing, maintaining, and selling office and chair mats — no marketing fluff.
About this book
Most office and chair mats are purchased with less thought than a box of pens. Then the mat cracks in winter, curls at the edges, slides across the carpet, or yellows within a year. This handbook fixes that. Written for professionals who need practical answers, it explains what chair mats actually are, how they behave under real-world loads, and why a mat that works on low-pile carpet can fail on a resilient tile floor. It covers materials like PVC, polycarbonate, and polypropylene with their real lifespans and temperature limits, not just their marketing names.
The book walks through the decision process step by step: measuring your space, identifying your floor type, matching castor hardness to mat hardness, and understanding the implications of thickness and lip design. It then covers installation mistakes that void warranties, routine maintenance that actually extends mat life, and troubleshooting guides for curling, cracking, sliding, and staining. The final sections address the commercial landscape, including notable manufacturers, distribution channels, and concrete business opportunities from reselling to private labeling.
Whether you manage a 200-seat call center, outfit a medical office, or run a home workshop, this handbook gives you the specifications, standards references, and practical procedures to buy the right mat once and maintain it properly.
Reader Reviews
Margaret Clark
★★★★★Finally, a book that treats chair mats like an engineering problem instead of a consumer impulse buy. I manage the office supplies for a 40-person law firm and we've been burning through cheap mats every eighteen months. The chapter on material types alone saved us a fortune — we switched from PVC to polycarbonate for the partners' offices and the difference in curling resistance is obvious. The troubleshooting section also correctly diagnosed the edge-curling problem we had on our low-pile carpet. This is the handbook I wish existed when I started this job.
Jessica Jackson
★★★★★Solid, practical reference — most of it is genuinely useful and well-organized. I appreciated that the selection chapter actually gives you a repeatable method instead of saying 'consider your needs.' The maintenance section on cleaning without damaging the surface finish was worth the price alone. My only complaint is that the business-opportunities chapter is a bit thin if you're already in the reselling game, which I am. It covers the basics but doesn't dig much beyond the obvious. Still, for the price, it's the best chair mat resource I've found.
Sarah Hernandez
★★★★★I run a home office with a heavy-duty ergonomic chair and I've gone through three mats in two years — cracked ones, yellowed ones, ones that slide around like they're on ice. This book explained exactly why each one failed. The bit about castor hardness versus mat hardness was an eye-opener. I also followed the unrolling and flattening instructions and my current mat lies flat for the first time ever. It's not a glamorous subject, but the authors clearly know their stuff. Highly recommend for anyone who actually sits in a chair all day.
James Scott
★★★★★Good, dense reference with a lot of practical detail. As a facilities coordinator I've bought hundreds of mats across several sites, and the material science sections here are more honest than anything I've seen from manufacturers. The chapter on installation correctly emphasizes floor prep, which is where most people go wrong. I docked a star because the book sometimes veers into technical weeds — durometer ratings and curl recovery tables are important, but some of it feels like it was written for a materials engineer rather than a buyer. Still, worth it for the troubleshooting chapter alone.
Susan Smith
★★★★★Very useful for a small business owner like me — we bought mats for our reception area and two back offices and the decision framework in Chapter 3 kept us from overpaying for features we don't need. The note about how dark-colored mats hide scuffs but show dust was spot on, and I actually changed my purchase based on that. It reads a little dry in places and the glossary is a bit basic for anyone with experience, but the step-by-step installation guide was clear enough that I did it all myself without calling anyone. Good value.