What is Barrier Matting?

Barrier matting systems, also known as entrance matting, is usually a fixed matting system made from aluminium or plastic, and featuring inserts made of carpet, nylon brushes, or rubber/PVC scrapers.

Different types of inserts are designed to scrape dirt or absorb moisture from footwear and wheeled traffic, and the combination you specify will depend on the environment, amount of footfall, and type of traffic.

Barrier matting is designed to stop moisture and debris from being tracked into a building and can offer a number of aesthetic and practical benefits for any business.

• First impressions – Barrier matting systems create a safe and clean entrance for employees and visitors. We all understand first impressions count, and an impressive, clean and tidy entrance can help portray a positive brand image to prospective clients.
• Slip Safety – Accidents can be prevented by moisture and contaminants being scraped off or absorbed from footwear at the entrance of your building. To effectively clean footwear and wheeled traffic, correctly specified barrier matting must be installed. The matting needs to have enough length to cope with the level of footfall. The HSE recently reported that during 2019/20, 29% of non-fatal injuries to employees were attributed to slips, trips or falls on the same level.
• Reduced maintenance costs – By reducing contaminants on internal flooring, internal cleaning costs can be reduced. It has been reported that it can cost around £500 to remove 1kg of dirt once inside a building. An individual could walk in at least 0.58g of dirt per day – this figure can be 10x as much in wet weather. Barrier matting helps to prolong the life of internal flooring, by trapping moisture and debris from entering the building.

The majority of barrier matting systems are manufactured from aluminium, such as our Plan.a system and are designed to be installed into a mat well frame. If a mat well is not available, we recommend matting options with bevelled edging to prevent trip hazards and to allow safe access for wheeled traffic, such as wheelchairs.

We also have a range of EasyInstall™ barrier matting products, ideal for recessed entrance wells. Part of this range is PathMaster3 – a whole entrance mat in a box, see how easy is to install barrier matting:

When specifying entrance matting it is important to keep in mind the cleaning and maintenance requirements for the particular product chosen, while taking into account daily footfall. Keeping to a schedule ensures the mattings high performance, as well as keeping it looking great. Different systems require different treatments.

To help you we’ve created a go-to cleaning & maintenance guide for entrance matting systems, there’s even a spot cleaning guide which covers:

• How to remove chewing gum from entrance matting