Felt pads for rugs on hardwood floors

When choosing a rug pad for your home or business, quality and materials should be top priorities. The internet is filled with stories about how a rug pad damaged, stripped, or stained floor finishes. Unfortunately, today's rug pad market is filled with inferior rug pads that can cause serious harm to floor finishes.

The rug pads that cause floor damage are usually imported PVC and plastic rug pads. This article will discuss the dangers of these imported PVC rug pads as well as provide safer solutions, such as felt or rubber rug pads that offer all the benefits of a rug pad without damaging your hardwood floors.

WHY ARE FELT AND RUBBER RUG PADS BETTER THAN PVC AND PLASTIC ONES?

Unlike many imported PVC pads, a natural rubber rug pad will never stain or discolor hardwood floors. Natural rubber is a low Volatile Organic Compound (VOC), non-adhesive based material designed to grip floors without sticking to them.

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT INFERIOR PVC AND PLASTIC RUG PADS

The main problem with most imported PVC pads they are coated with adhesives to enhance grip, which can destroy your floors. These pads contain a combination of toxic chemicals which can "off-gas" and stain floors as well as fill your home with toxins. The vast majority of these pads on the market come from overseas manufacturers and usually contain chemicals, oils, or adhesives that may negatively react with the chemicals in your floor finishes.

A perfect example of this is the use of phthalates in many PVC rug pads. Phthalates are a class of chemicals used to make plastics tougher and harder to break, however, they are also extremely toxic and can be used as dissolving agents. As you can assume, you probably don’t want something that is listed as a dissolving agent on your brand new polyurethane finished hardwood floors.

Another issue with imported PVC pads is that they are made with an adhesive coating designed to enhance their non slip grip. Unfortunately, these pads just end up literally sticking to your floors rather than gripping them. Also due to this adhesive process, the pad usually ends up sticking to itself. (As shown below)

Some manufacturers will use clay fillers in place of natural rubber to reduce manufacturing costs. This causes the pad to prematurely shed and turn to powder, rendering the pad completely useless while causing a mess and damaging your floors. (Shown below) This is especially true with rugs that receive more foot traffic, or those in hot and humid climates as the pad will dry out much quicker. It will take a few years to show signs of wear, and by that time you’ve probably already forgotten where you bought your rug pad. Also, most consumers don’t rearrange rugs or refinish floors often so this issue often goes unnoticed.

Ultimately, imported PVC and plastic rug pads are manufactured to be as cheap as possible for American consumers - they are not designed to be safe on floors.

CHOOSING A SAFER RUG PAD FOR YOUR HARDWOOD OR HARD SURFACE FLOORS

Rug pads provide comfort and a sound foundation for your rug or carpet, but the most important thing a rug pad should deliver is protection for your hardwood and other hard surface flooring, which can be very vulnerable when it comes to staining and stripping.

Investing in a higher quality rug pad will benefit you in the long term – as the cost to replace or your floors vastly outweighs the savings from an cheap rug pad. A quality rug pad should anchor your rug for many years, and not just be a short term solution. A quality rug pad should also be odor free and never stick to your floors. A quality pug pad should protect your floors, never destroy them.

Natural Rubber

Natural rubber is our top recommendation for hardwood floors. It’s perfectly safe to use with all hardwood flooring and finishes. Natural rubber also has very strong gripping power but will never stick to your floors.

Natural rubber pads are also far more eco-friendly than PVC pads. This is important because PVC pads often contain chemicals that can "off-gas". This "off-gassing" is actually what causes the rug pad to eat away at your floor finish. Our rubber is derived from white sap from the hevea brasiliensis tree, is 100% natural, and doesn’t contain any harmful chemicals or plasticizers that can damage floors.

Natural rubber is superior in regards to rug pad protection, non-slip grip, eco-friendly materials, and floor safety. Natural rubber is particularly suitable for hardwood floors and poly finishes that are prone to staining.

This sustainable and eco-friendly material can be used with all types of carpets and rugs while outperforming its synthetic and plastic counterparts.

Felt + Rubber

The combination of felt and natural rubber using a gentle heat-pressing technique creates a rug pad that lends unyielding, non-slip traction with thick, cushioned support. It is essentially a thick layer of felt combined with a thinner non slip natural rubber pad. These two materials create a very durable and long-lasting pad that will extend the life of your rug and floors. Felt and rubber is ideal for flat-weave rugs, because the needle-punched felt surface will cling to the bottom of your area rugs to anchor it to its surface.