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A great pad can transform a rug–making it cushier and more comfortable, preventing slips, and even increasing its longevity. After researching dozens of rug pads, interviewing four experts, and testing 15 models, the Mohawk Home Supreme Dual Surface Felted Rug Pad has the best combination of cushioning and nonskid grip of any rug pad we tried. Afterprocessing felt
This felt-and-rubber pad offers the most cushioning underfoot of any we tried, and is also one of the best at keeping rugs in place.
The firm Durahold has a unique grooved surface that held a rug in place better than any other pad we tried. Its dense felt is durable too, so it’s a good choice for high-traffic areas.
This pad is thinner than most others we tested, making it versatile enough for placement anywhere, and you can easily cut it to fit rugs of any size.
This felt-and-rubber pad offers the most cushioning underfoot of any we tried, and is also one of the best at keeping rugs in place.
Most of our testers agreed that the ¼-inch-thick Mohawk Home Supreme Dual Surface Felted Rug Pad felt the most comfortable underfoot. We also think this rug pad offers better grip than most of the other pads we tested, and it will stay put under even the most rambunctious, sprinting pets’ paws. It comes in a wide range of rectangular and round sizes and has a one-year warranty.
The firm Durahold has a unique grooved surface that held a rug in place better than any other pad we tried. Its dense felt is durable too, so it’s a good choice for high-traffic areas.
For extra grip, or if you have higher-quality rugs, consider the ⅓-inch-thick felt-and-rubber Durahold Plus Non Slip Rug Pad, a favorite among our experts and some of our testers. It holds on to both the rug and the floor better, thanks to heat-pressed diamond-shaped grooves on the top and firm rubber on the bottom. This design makes it especially good for high-traffic areas, or if you have pets or kids who like to move rugs around. The Durahold’s denser felt will also hold up better to wear than our main pick’s and won’t flatten out with use. This pad comes in many sizes and costs roughly twice as much as the Mohawk Home. No-Muv, the company that makes Durahold pads, offers a 10-year warranty.
This pad is thinner than most others we tested, making it versatile enough for placement anywhere, and you can easily cut it to fit rugs of any size.
While felt-and-rubber pads generally perform better than rubber-only mesh pads, the Rug Pad USA Super Lock Natural is a great option if you have low-profile doors or prefer a thinner, non-felt type of pad. This rubber pad feels nearly as cushiony as our felt picks but at a fraction of the thickness, and it offers exceptional grip. The Super Lock Natural’s mesh is denser than that of competitors, and thus better at protecting rugs and doormats and holding them in place. Nonetheless, for living room, bedroom, or hallway rugs, we recommend choosing our main or upgrade pick, as either of those pads will boost the longevity of your rugs even further.
This felt-and-rubber pad offers the most cushioning underfoot of any we tried, and is also one of the best at keeping rugs in place.
Of the pads we looked at, the Mohawk Home Supreme Dual Surface Felted Rug Pad has the best combination of cushioning, excellent grip, and a wide range of sizes.
We tested this ¼-inch-thick pad under flat-woven and high-pile rugs, and found that it improved the feel of all of them by providing the most substantial cushioning underneath our feet of any pad we tried. Our testers similarly liked the Mohawk Home because it was the most pleasant to stand on in bare feet. Even though it offers springy cushioning, this pad’s dense felt should hold its shape for years.
The Mohawk Home’s grip was among the best we tested. It didn’t budge, no matter how much our testers shifted, tugged, or trod on it. In our at-home test, it withstood a cat bounding back and forth across it without sliding around or causing the rug to bunch up. Wirecutter senior editor Christine Cyr Clisset has owned this pad since 2015, and she told us that her flat-woven rug did come up after some clawing or play between her two cats, but that the pad itself never moved on her wood floors. Wirecutter staff writer Michael Sullivan uses the Mohawk under a large kilim rug in his living room and says it adds plenty of cushion but doesn’t feel too bulky underneath a thinner rug.
This rug pad is available in 25 sizes, including rectangular, square, and round options. Most people should be able to find the size they need without having to trim it further. The pad also comes with a one-year warranty against manufacturing defects. While that isn’t the best warranty we found, we think it should be fine for covering any initial problems you may have with the pad.
The firm Durahold has a unique grooved surface that held a rug in place better than any other pad we tried. Its dense felt is durable too, so it’s a good choice for high-traffic areas.
The Durahold Plus Non Slip Rug Pad came highly recommended by expert Paul Iskyan. The top of the pad held on to a rug better than our main pick, and its denser felt will likely last longer. But considering it’s roughly twice the price per foot compared with the Mowhawk, we think the Durahold is worth the expense only for high-quality rugs. Our testers also found that this model’s denser felt was slightly less cushiony underfoot.
At ⅓ inch thick, the Durahold is a bit thicker than our main pick. In our tests, its rubber bottom gripped wood and cork flooring slightly better than our main pick, and none of the other rug pads we tested felt as immovable on the ground. At home, we tested this pad in a kitchen, replacing an old rug pad that was notorious for slipping around and bunching up, and the Durahold didn’t budge an inch in that high-traffic area. The diamond-shaped heat-pressed grooves in the felt top increase the pad’s grip on rugs too. Our testers found that this design held more rugs firmly in place than the other felt-and-rubber pads we tried, and as one Wirecutter editor pointed out, the grid pattern works well as a guide if you need to trim the pad yourself.
The Durahold is available in 20 sizes on Amazon, including round, half-round, square, runner, and rectangular options. If you don’t see the size you need, or if you’re looking for a custom-cut pad, you could try other Durahold-only retailers like this one. It also has a 10-year limited guarantee honored through No-Muv, the maker of this pad, protecting against defects in workmanship or construction.
I’ve been using the Durahold pad under a rug in my entryway since the beginning of 2018, and it’s one of the best rug pads I’ve owned. Even in a high-traffic area, it rarely shifts around on the floor, and it holds my rug securely in place. Plus, the thick cushioning feels great to walk on.
Other Wirecutter staffers have this pad too and generally like it. Senior staff writer Kevin Purdy had a hard time figuring out which pad would be the right size for his sitting-room area rug, but says, “In terms of grip, it’s great.” Staff writer Michael Sullivan has a couple of small Durahold rug pads in his kitchen, though, and says his rugs sometimes slip around on the pad.
This pad is thinner than most others we tested, making it versatile enough for placement anywhere, and you can easily cut it to fit rugs of any size.
We’re not big fans of thin rubber-mesh rug pads, but they are necessary in certain cases, and some people just prefer them. If you have a low-profile door, or if you keep a rug outdoors or in a damp area, we recommend the Rug Pad USA Super Lock Natural rug pad. We tested three mesh rug pads, and this was the only one that explicitly advertised being made of 100 percent natural rubber, rather than some other, rubberlike materials such as PVC. Although we’ve been unable to confirm the exact materials in competing pads, some have received a number of complaints about their leaving behind sticky residue.
The Super Lock Natural also has a denser construction than the other mesh pads we looked at, giving it more surface area to grip the floor and a bit more cushioning underfoot. A denser pad should also protect your rugs better from wear. Plus, this pad comes with the best warranty of any of the models we recommend: 20 years.
Rug pads can help rugs stay put, provide cushioning, protect floors, and extend the life of a rug. You may not need a rug pad if your rugs already have a rubberized nonskid backing. For this guide, we focused on rug pads that can work on wood, tile, or other hard floors; we did not look at pads or tape intended for use on wall-to-wall carpeting.
Consider investing in a new rug pad if your current one won’t stay put, or if you’re interested in upgrading to something with better cushioning. If you've been using a cheap rug pad, like the thin felt ones sold at IKEA, you'll probably be surprised by how much a good pad improves the feel of your area rug. The rug will slip less and feel much more cushioned underfoot. It’s also a small investment with a potentially substantial return: For about $1 to $2 a square foot, you can add years to the life of your rug.
The pad should be smaller than your area rug by 1 to 2 inches on all sides, according to rug pad makers and sellers. This ensures that the edges of the rug lie flat against the floor and don’t become a tripping hazard; it also reduces wear and keeps the pad hidden. If you have a good-quality pad, you should not need any additional adhesives to hold it in place.
A great rug pad should have firm but supportive cushioning and keep a strong grip on both your rug and the floor; it should also fit the dimensions of your rug, and it should not damage your floors over years of wear. Rug pads can be made from many materials, including PVC, rubber, felt, or memory foam. Generally, the best rug pads combine a layer of synthetic felt with natural-rubber backing.
We primarily considered three types of rug pad:
Felt and rubber: Our experts agreed that felt backed with rubber was superior to other pad types because the felt provides cushion underfoot while the rubber backing excels at gripping the floor and preventing slips. Paul Iskyan, a rug expert who cleans carpets for ABC Carpet & Home in New York, told us that felt density was more important than thickness in a rug pad, because a denser pad wouldn’t flatten over time like a less dense one might.
Felt: If you have a large area rug with heavy furniture on it, a felt-only pad could be sufficient, but this type generally provides the least amount of grip.
Rubber mesh: Iskyan said he preferred felt-and-rubber pads for most uses, but did concede that sometimes an all-rubber mesh pad would be necessary for areas with low-clearance doors, or places that get wet frequently, such as outdoor areas. Mesh pads don’t provide as much padding as felt pads, so your rugs will wear more quickly with them. Many rubber-mesh pads are also made with fillers like clay and sand, which can leave a powdery residue on the floor beneath your rugs, so it’s best to seek out pads made of 100 percent rubber. Iskyan told us you should never buy a rug pad made from PVC, because it can stain or discolor floors.
A good rug pad can (and should) last for many years. Some come with 10- or 20-year warranties, and many should easily outlast those. Stephanie Waterman, account manager for rug company Armadillo & Co, told us that “in many cases the pads outlive your rug and can be easily cut down and used again and again.” Since there was so much inconsistency in coverage, we decided a good warranty was helpful, but not critical to finding a quality rug pad.
Some of our experts said that a good rug pad should be made from felt so densely woven that it would be difficult to trim with home scissors. We generally agree with that advice, but we have found that, in a pinch, it’s reasonable to trim a pad—especially a rubber-mesh pad or a thinner felt pad—down to size.
With those criteria in mind, we searched for dual-layered, felt-and-rubber pads that ranked high on the websites of Amazon, West Elm, Crate and Barrel, Pottery Barn, IKEA, Home Depot, and Wayfair. We didn't set a limit for thickness, but it turned out that all the rug pads we considered were less than ⅓ inch thick—rug pads of that thickness are simply more popular than thicker pads. We also focused on nonslip pads, since most people buy rug pads to hold their rugs in place. After narrowing the field to 14 options (11 felt-and-rubber, one all-felt, and three rubber-only), we set out to test them.
We quickly noticed that many of the rug pads we brought in looked nearly identical. We eliminated those that were too slippery on our cork floors or didn’t feel cushiony enough underfoot. We tried each mat with rugs of varying thickness and pile, and we tested on hardwood floors in addition to cork. After narrowing down the group to our top five, we asked a panel of testers to try them out.
In 2020, we did another search for new rug pads that may have become available since we published this guide. Finding no new models that fit our criteria, we opted to test our original three picks again to confirm that they were still as well-made as they were when we first tried them. We conducted tests similar to previous years, placing them on both concrete and hardwood floors and topping them with rugs of different thickness and pile. Our tests confirmed that our picks remain the best at providing cushion and slip-resistance.
We like the Crate and Barrel Multisurface Thick Rug Pad, and technically nothing is wrong with it, but we prefer the feel of the Mohawk Home and Durahold models.
The IKEA Båring is thin and available in just one size, and when we opened it up it had a sticky coating that seemed liable to leave residue on any floor. We wouldn’t want it in our home.
Crate and Barrel’s Multisurface Thin Rug Pad is too thin and isn’t as comfortable underfoot as our picks.
We tested the Rug Pad USA Extra Thick Felt Rug Pad to see what an all-felt pad would be like, but ultimately we discovered that this type of pad didn’t keep a rug in place at all.
The Gorilla Grip and Epica mesh pads both had very loose “weaves,” with a lot of space between the rubber portions of the mesh. They provided significantly less grip than our mesh pick, and in the case of the Epica, made rugs feel somewhat uneven underfoot.
The felt-and-rubber pads from Gorilla Grip, Wayfair Basics, Birch Lane, American Slide Stop (all-surface and premium), and Rug Pad USA were all very similar. Their felts were slightly different in some cases, but none were as cushiony as the Mohawk Home or nearly as grippy as the Durahold.
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Miles McDonald, marketing director, Rug Pad USA, phone interview, January 22, 2018
Paul Iskyan, rug expert, ABC Rug & Carpet Cleaning Service, phone interview, January 24, 2018
Stephanie Waterman, account manager, Armadillo & Co, email interview, January 31, 2018
SamRugPadMan, How to Choose Rug Pad Thickness, Rug Pad Corner, August 27, 2013
Polyester Tennis Ball Felt Wirecutter is the product recommendation service from The New York Times. Our journalists combine independent research with (occasionally) over-the-top testing so you can make quick and confident buying decisions. Whether it’s finding great products or discovering helpful advice, we’ll help you get it right (the first time).