Best rubber door mats

This site has a whole page devoted to the fact that door mat makers do not publish pile height. Rubber-Cal puts its thickness in the product title. Three-eighths of an inch, stated before you have clicked anything, which makes it one of the very few mats you can measure against your own door gap without owning it first.

The surface is the other reason it leads. These are drainage holes straight through the mat rather than ribs on top of it, so water that comes off a boot leaves the mat entirely instead of pooling in a channel. On a porch with a fall on it, or on gravel or grating, that is the most effective wet-weather geometry in this comparison.

It is a commercial specification sold domestically, in natural and reclaimed rubber, and the same line is offered in 1/8, 1/2 and 5/8 inch thicknesses in other sizes - so if 3/8 is wrong for your door you can move within the range rather than changing product. Worth a caution on that point: the sibling Linear mat gives 3/8 inch in its title and 0.3 inch in its specification table, so confirm the exact thickness of the exact size you order.

Two honest limits. No item weight is published anywhere, and on an outdoor mat weight is half of whether it stays where you put it. And drainage only helps if what is under the mat can take the water - on a sealed concrete porch the holes move the puddle to the slab rather than making it disappear, which is the same point our rubber tray versus drainage comparison makes about trays indoors.

Tire-link is the oldest construction in this category and still the toughest. Strips of recycled tire rubber are woven into an open herringbone, which gives you a mat that is essentially indestructible, drops grit and water straight through itself, and has no fibers, backing or adhesive to fail. It is the mat you buy once.

Both numbers that matter are published, which is rare. Seven and a half pounds is the most mass on this page by a clear margin, and mass is what keeps an outdoor mat from sliding down a step or lifting in wind. Thickness is stated at 0.62 inches, so you know exactly where you stand on clearance - and where you stand is outside the swing of any normally hung door.

That thickness is the honest cost. Our door clearance guide puts a typical interior door gap at half an inch to three-quarters; 0.62 inches eats most of that before the door has moved. This is a mat for outside an outward-opening door, or for a position the door never crosses.

Two more things to know about recycled tire rubber, because nobody selling it volunteers them. It has a smell when new that fades outdoors over a few weeks and does not fade as fast under cover. And it can leave marks on porous surfaces like unsealed concrete or light stone - the same caution this site gives about rubber-backed mats on certain floors. Outdoors on a sealed step it is a non-issue; on a pale sandstone porch, test a corner first.

Two tenths of an inch is the number that puts this mat on the page. A door hung with the usual half-inch to three-quarter-inch gap clears it comfortably, which makes this the only rubber mat here you can put inside an inward-opening door without measuring twice and hoping. For anyone who has bought a rubber mat and discovered the door stops against it, that is the whole decision.

What has changed is the scale. Calloway Mills sells this ridge-scraper construction in a 3 by 5 foot sheet, which is fifteen square feet of rubber and nineteen pounds of it. That weight is an advantage in the one way that matters outdoors: nothing is going to kick it out of line or lift a corner of it in a gale, which is the failure that ends most thin mats in exposed positions.

The trade for thinness is drainage. A ridge pattern on a solid base has nowhere for water to go: it collects in the channels between the ridges and stays there until it evaporates or someone tips the mat. That is fine at a covered door and less good in an exposed position where the mat is repeatedly rained on.

The other trade is that this is no longer a doorstep product. Three by five feet covers a porch, a garage threshold or the whole landing outside a back door, and it will look absurd in front of a standard single door. If the opening you are covering is a genuine double or French door, our double door mat roundup covers that size class in fabric, where the mats are a fraction of this weight and none of them publishes a thickness at all.

The lattice is the point. An open pattern lets water fall through the mat instead of sitting in a channel, which on an uncovered step in a rainy week is the difference between a mat that dries between showers and one that is permanently wet. DII states that explicitly - the open design allows water and moisture to pass through - and prices the mat below everything else here.

Weight is decent for the size. Five and a bit pounds on an 18 by 30 inch mat works out at well over a pound per square foot, which is denser than the larger thin mat on this page and enough that it stays put in ordinary use.

What you do not get is a thickness. DII publishes the footprint, the weight, the material and the pattern, and stops. On a mat that will likely go outside that may not matter; on a mat going inside an inward-opening door it matters entirely, and our door clearance guide cannot help with a figure that does not exist.

The other honest note is about what a lattice does with the dirt. It scrapes well and then lets the grit drop through onto whatever is underneath, so the mat stays cleaner and the step under it does not. On a porch you sweep anyway that is an advantage. On a deck with gaps, or a doorstep you never look at, it just moves the problem down a level - and for a full hallway treatment you still want an absorbent mat inside, which is what our indoor mat roundup is for.

Judged on what it publishes, this is a solid mat. Six point one pounds is the second heaviest here and it is spread over a full 24 by 36 inches, which is a real doormat footprint rather than the 18 by 30 default. It is rubber all the way through, so there is no fiber face to flatten and no backing to separate, and the listing states fade resistance alongside the usual waterproof claim.

Then there is the bullet headed low-profile door clearance, which describes a thin outdoor doormat that fits under doors. That is a claim about a number, made without the number. Three competitors on this page publish theirs, and the published figures run from 0.20 inches - which clears a standard door easily - to 0.62 inches, which clears nothing. Without a figure, 'low profile' tells a buyer with a tight door absolutely nothing.

The surface has the same limitation as the other ridge mat here. Raised ribs on a solid base scrape well and then keep the water in the channels between them, so after rain the mat holds a thin film until it evaporates. The mats with holes or an open weave on this page do not have that problem.

The listing copy is worth a mention too, because it is symptomatic. Each bullet opens by describing the shopper it is written for - customers searching for, shoppers looking for, those asking for - rather than the product. That is search-engine prose rather than a specification sheet, and on a page where the competition publishes thicknesses to two decimal places it is a conspicuous way to fill five bullets. How we pick.