Best Yoga Mats and What To Keep In Mind When Deciding, by Review Experts

best yoga mats

WRITTEN BY THE TEAM AT REVIEWS.COM

Whether you’re a seasoned yogi or a beginner, your yoga mat should be comfortable and easy to maintain. We spent one month talking to over a dozen yoga instructors and sweating, stretching, and savasana-ing it out in our offices, homes, and yoga studios to find the very best.

We tested 16 of the best and most talked about yoga mats.

  • Liforme Yoga Mat – Best overall
  • Alo Yoga Warrior Mat – Best no-frills mat
  • Hugger Mugger Para Rubber Yoga Mat – Best budget mat
  • Jade Fusion Mat – Best thick mat
  • Liforme Travel Mat – Best travel mat

How We Chose The Best Yoga Mats

Support
A good yoga mat should walk the line between being squishy enough to take some of the pressure off your joints, while being dense enough to offer a stable foundation. Too-soft mats may be comfortable, but they’re difficult to hold a pose on — and while you can stand on a too-firm mat forever, you may end up hurting your joints. Beginners, pregnant yogis, and people with sensitive joints should consider thicker mats, which offer more support. Yogis who commute or travel a lot may prefer thinner mats that are easier to roll up and carry.

Grip
The “grippiness” of a mat has two parts. One is how grippy the mat is against your hands and feet — are you slowly sliding out of place during warrior pose, or are you solidly planted? The other is the traction of the mat against the floor: Does your mat slip around on smooth floors, or is it firmly stuck in place throughout your session? Sweat can be a factor too, especially if you practice an intensive form like hot yoga, so you want to make sure your mat will stay grippy through it all.

Maintenance
We wanted to make sure our top picks would be easy to clean and durable (no mid-session mat shrapnel here!). We found that more porous, open-cell mat surfaces tended to be grippier, but were also harder to clean — they tend to absorb everything, like a giant sponge. Smooth, closed-cell surfaces tend to be easier to clean, but may be more slippery. The sweet spot is a mat that’s just grippy enough, but doesn’t hold onto dirt and debris.

Hype
We wanted to see how the most popular options compare, so we sought out mats that people were most excited about — from old favorites like the Manduka PRO to newer releases like the Alo Yoga Warrior Mat. We sifted through numerous “best-of,” “bestselling,” and “top-rated” lists, reached out to over 30 yoga instructors for their opinions, and dug into requests and queries from our yoga-loving readers.

(Image: Creative Commons Zero (CC0))

(Article first published as The Best Yoga Mats)

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