UltraSoft Absorbent Bath Mat

This is the plush end of the bath mat spectrum, and the appeal is largely underfoot. The surface is a dense microfibre pile with thick cushioning beneath it, so stepping out of a shower onto it feels soft and supported rather than like standing on a thin sheet of fabric over cold tile. Microfibre is used here for a specific reason beyond comfort. The fibres are far finer than ordinary cotton, which gives an enormous amount of surface area in a small space, and surface area is what actually absorbs water. That is why a microfibre mat pulls water off your feet almost on contact rather than needing you to stand and shuffle. Running through the pile are soft striped channels, which are not purely decorative: they break the surface into ridges, so air can reach further into the mat and it dries faster than a uniform flat pile of the same thickness would. The result is a mat that is genuinely comfortable to stand on and still dries between uses, which is the combination most plush mats fail to manage. Thick and absorbent usually means slow to dry, and the channels are what break that trade-off. In a bathroom with reasonable ventilation it will be ready again well before the next person needs it.

Underneath is a non-woven backing covered in raised dots, which grips bathroom tile and stops the mat travelling when someone steps onto it at an angle. That matters more in a bathroom than almost anywhere else in a house, since a wet tile floor is one of the genuinely hazardous surfaces most people walk on every day, and a mat that slides underfoot is worse than no mat at all. Worth knowing how that grip actually works, because it explains the one case where it disappoints: it relies on friction against the floor, so it holds best on clean dry tile and least well where soap film, conditioner or floor polish has left residue behind. If a mat ever begins to creep, cleaning the floor beneath it fixes the problem far more reliably than replacing the mat, and it takes about a minute with an ordinary floor cleaner and a dry pass afterwards. The whole thing is fully machine washable rather than needing hand rinsing, and it keeps both its softness and its shape through repeated washing cycles, which is the part that determines whether a mat lasts a couple of years or only a couple of months before the pile goes flat, matted and unpleasant to stand on.

Two sizes are offered, 40 by 60 and 50 by 80 centimetres, alongside eight colours running through brown, pink, dark grey, grey, dark blue, khaki, red and blue. That is a wider colour range than most bath mats bother with, and it makes it far easier to match an existing bathroom than to settle for whatever white or grey happened to be in stock. On placement, the mat belongs at the point where you step out rather than centred decoratively in the middle of the floor, and if the bath and the shower are separate you genuinely need two. A tip worth the small extra outlay: buying two identical mats and rotating them weekly makes both last considerably longer, because each gets a proper week of drying and a wash between stints instead of being permanently damp. One safety note stated plainly, since it applies to every mat of this kind: this is for standing on beside a bath, never inside one. In-bath mats are suction-backed and made to grip wet enamel, and a floor mat used inside a tub would be dangerous because nothing anchors it to a slick curved surface. On the floor, where it belongs, it does its job very well.

• Material: Premium microfibre pile with thick cushioning
• Backing: Anti-slip non-woven dotted grip
• Surface: Soft striped channels for faster drying
• Sizes: 40 x 60 cm, 50 x 80 cm
• Colours: Brown, Pink, Dark Grey, Grey, Dark Blue, Khaki, Red, Blue
• Care: Fully machine washable - keeps softness and shape
• Safety: For floor use beside a bath - never inside a bath or shower tray

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