When we last moved house, my ‘home office’ (a.k.a. the spot in the house where the computer lives) went from being in a spare room with ancient, worn carpet to a common area with a nice wooden floor. I thought it was great that I could roll around in my office chair easier and have chair races around the room, but I soon found the downside…the chair wearing the floor’s finish.
The solution was obvious. Go to Officeworks and get some random piece of plastic, at a cost of about $60, that was called a ‘chairmat’ and place it between my chair and the wooden floor. Well that seemed to be great for a while, but it was ugly and the floor still seemed to be getting worse over time, but perhaps not quite as quickly as without it. There had to be a better option.
Well, just at the time that I was done with the old plastic chair mat, look at what showed up on the end of a Costco aisle when I headed to the Docklands store here in Australia…the Anji Mountain Bamboo Werks office chair mat.
Upon pulling this product out of it’s box you will find the chair mat is a series of bamboo slats about 50mm wide and 5mm thick. The finish looks great, but he best bit about the chair mat is the backing that holds the slats together and protects the floors. The backing is a heavy duty felt with a pattern of small rubber nipples to stop the mat from sliding around on the floor. This eliminates the mat continuing to cause damage to the floor like my old plastic chair mat. The chair mat is 122cm x 107cm, which is bigger than most of the cheaper chair mats at Officeworks. It also has rounded corners and, according to the manufacturers website, the bamboo is also sustainably harvested.
Now at $78.99 the price was not as low as some of the chair mats you can get at places like Officeworks. But the quality of this product is fantastic and it looks the goods. The box also indicates that this char mat is suitable for hard or soft floor coverings, so you don’t need to pour over the shelves at your local office supply store and figure out which one will suit your floor and your budget. Costco is carrying it in Australia in a natural (light) or a dark cherry finish so you should also be able to select a mat to suit your decor.