The Cost of Protecting Your Floors: Renting vs Buying Mats

Protecting floors is a big concern for many industries as you want to protect employees and visitors from slips, trips, and falls, but also protect your building from outdoor dirt and grime that can rack up cleaning and labor costs. To do so, mats are placed strategically around the building but businesses must consider the benefits of purchasing their own mats versus renting mats from a third party. Which one is most cost effective?

Maintenance

Renting mats is often advertised as a simple answer to maintenance with mats. You don’t have to clean them or think about them and the rental company will take care of it. Mike Kuhlman, with M + A Matting, says that the perception that cleaning mats is complicated is misleading, but a big reason some choose to go the renting route.

"In reality," Kuhlman says, "the most maintenance a floor mat needs is daily vacuuming. Once or twice a year mats should be deep cleaned using a carpet extractor or a power washer." he adds.

Effectiveness

Another reason he says renting can be a mistake for businesses is because often the mats that rental companies carry are not the correct ones for an entrance. Kuhlman says that because rental mats can be easily rolled up and put in a washer, they're not the right material or the right size to be put in an entryway to effectively collect outside dirt and water.

“I live by Kroger and a couple winters ago [I noticed] they recognized they needed 30 feet of matting but in order to accomplish it — the only way to accomplish it — was to put two, 3-by-10s side-by-side and stack them three deep,” Kuhlman says. “Now, you’ve got six mats laying there whereas I could have put one of these Waterhog products there, either a 6-by-30 or a 6-by-20 or even a 6-by-12 [and they] would have outperformed those six mats laying there because it is the wrong stuff.”