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Whether woven with rattan or ramie, accentuated by scallops or stripes, or plain and simple, place mats do much more than just protect your table against heat, cold, and food (though that’s important, too). They’re a tabletop piece that, when factored into an overall tablescape, can transform a blandly set table into a spread that’ll have guests reminiscing about more than just the food. And, like tablecloths or drinking glasses, place mats are pieces that you can collect over time. “You’re not going to go and say, ‘You know what? Today, I’m going to buy every tablescape item for the rest of my life,’” advises Saanya Ali, writer and founder of the site SOIRÉE. “It’s something that the pieces come to you, but bit by bit you’re building your arsenal.”
To help you build that arsenal, I spoke to more than 12 stylish people — including cookbook authors, store owners, and interior designers, plus the members of the Strategist staff — about their favorite place mats. Here you’ll find handcrafted mats from artisans in Mexico, kid-proof mats that actually look nice, and plenty of other options in a variety of interesting shapes and sizes. And to help you better achieve your tabletop vision, I sorted the place mats by shape and included picks at a variety of price points.
Update on November 20, 2024: Updated prices and checked stock for all products.
Round place mats
Strategist contributor Kiki Aranita pulls these colorful woven place mats out for special occasion meals where she wants to bring a bit of color to her table. The place mats are made of palm leaves that Guanajuato artisans have dyed, woven, and machine-stitched on top (just note: if you are using these on a lighter-colored table or with a light-colored plate, Aranita says the color can transfer). If you’re looking to add just a spot of color here and there, alternate these with any of the more neutral-colored place mats, which you’ll find below.
“This won’t come as a surprise to anyone who reads my newsletter Dinner: A Love Story, but when I’m sitting at a dinner table — whether it’s in the dining room or kitchen — I feel like something is missing if there are no place mats,” says author Jenny Rosenstrach. Her current favorite is a round natural rattan option that she inherited from her mother-in-law and that looks similar to these, which are available in three washes: a slate gray, honey brown, and natural rattan. “I feel like they’d be just as appropriate for a beach house as they are in my New York apartment,” she says. When not in use, the place mats “sit in a stack in the middle of my dining room table, propping up a fruit bowl or, right now, a bowl of decorative gourds,” Rosenstrach tells me, adding, “Yes, I am that person.”
If you’d rather an oval place mat that’s also handmade, go with Strategist senior editor Hilary Reid’s recommendation. It’s a woven place mat from Etsy that’s similar to a set that she got while on vacation in Jamaica. “I leave them on my table pretty much all the time, and love that the woven grass adds some texture on top of whatever tablecloth is underneath,” she says. Plus, she says washing them isn’t a drag: “It’s more of a shake them out after using situation.”
These place mats are made of recycled leather, and if you’re wondering what that feels like, recipe developer and food writer Rebecca Firkser describes it as having a slippery rather than buttery hand-feel. Over the years, she’s tried a variety of place mats, and these are the only ones that she’s stuck with. “They did exactly what I needed them to do: They keep the table clear, but they feel a little bit simple, but still fun-looking,” she adds. Since she owns them in four different colors, Firkser typically pairs them with an assortment of mismatched plates for an eclectic look. And at the end of the night, there’s no fuss: “I feel like you could just smear anything on them, and then they just wipe clean really quickly,” she says.
Recipe developer and fashion designer Peter Som describes these woven place mats as his “everyday” set. Like Reid’s woven oval mats, these are “woven in a nice tight weave in a natural tone that goes with any place setting,” he says. The higher price comes from the place mat’s origin: the Philippines, where artisans weave them by hand. And since they’re finished with a layer of lacquer, Som reports that “they wipe dry easily.”
Anna Polonsky, founder of the branding and design consultancy Polonsky & Friends, has been using these as her everyday place mats for nearly four years. “We had met Mariana Suarez over the years before she started her brand,” Polonsky says of her and her husband, adding that when the brand launched, “We fell in love with her collection.” Unlike the Zinnia place mats earlier on this list, these deep rust colored ones don’t transfer color and are made to last. “We’ve never had to change them, and we use them all the time,” she says. “There’s never an issue of wine stains or stains that don’t go away.”
Fabiana Faria and Helena Barquet, the owners of Coming Soon, have long carried Gaetano Pesce’s striking vessels in their store, but were always intrigued by his playful place mats. Today, these are the place mats that live on their own kitchen table — and they’re remarkably durable because they’re made of resin. “You can’t stain them because they’re not fabric,” Faria says. “And they’re such a fun pop of color.” When not in use, you can leave them on the table, or follow Barquet’s tip: “You can also stick them on your window and it looks like stained glass,” she says.
Rectangular place mats
Edy Massih, cookbook author and owner of Edy’s Grocer, uses these mats more for décor than for protecting his dining room table. “They go really well with the space because they’re brown and our space is brown and our table is also brown,” he says. But if brown isn’t your thing, the faux-leather place mats also come in ivory, black, and gray. And whether you use it for eating or for decorating, the place mat “makes it a little bit more elegant, and it gives you that feeling that you’re at a restaurant,” he says.
[Editor’s note: Edy’s brown mats are currently out of stock, but you can still buy the faux-leather mats in ivory, gray, and black.]
Molly Torres Portnof, a designer and the founder of design studio Date Interiors, recommends pairing this place mat with a wooden table, but adds that it goes well with a variety of styles “to either funk up a space or just kind of meld in with whatever the rest of the aesthetic of the kitchen or dining room is.” And despite sporting more natural colors, the placement is “just so beautiful, textural, and pretty simple,” she says.
[Editor’s Note: These gingham place mats are currently out of stock, but we’ll let you know when they’re back in stock.]
“‘Easy to wipe down’ is a key requirement of place mats in my household that involves children,” says Strategist senior editor Jen Trolio. These are flexible, which makes them more difficult to wipe down in the sink, but they’ve held up for more than three years in Trolio’s home. As far as kid-proof place mats go, it’s hard to get better than these, which come in a variety of reversible options. “You have to be okay with bright colors and kitsch,” Trolio adds. (If you’d like a kid-friendly option that’s more rigid, she recommends these delightful, and very affordable, ones from Target.)
For everyday meals and for toning down a tablescape that involves her Mexican Palma place mats, Aranita swears by these, which she typically buys in bulk as gifts when she goes back to Hawaii, where she grew up. They do wear down over time, but Aranita says that she is “extremely not gentle with them” and has cycled through many for nearly 20 years. “I wipe them down with sanitizer after use, but I’ve also hand washed them with soap and water,” she tells me.
Though Reid isn’t typically a fan of gingham, she says the black trim on these “makes them slightly more formal and refined” than the typical picnic-y vibe associated with the pattern. She’s been using these for over three years and finds that “they’ve held up well after several machine washes and air dries, and don’t get too wrinkly when they’re dried on a regular drying rack.” When it comes to using them for dining, she likes to pair them with some checkered napkins from the same line. And for a real statement, she says, “I’ll put the whole setup on top of a white linen tablecloth, which really makes them pop and almost look a little graphic.”
Faria initially recommended these place mats to us in 2020, and the place mats are still a mainstay in her and Barquet’s rotation — “and we have plenty of place mats,” Faria adds. After a decade of use, the place mats have only suffered a little fading, so you’ll be able to enjoy the vibrant fern scene for years to come. To clean, just throw them in the wash as they’re printed on half-cotton, half-linen material.
“Everything that Dusen Dusen does, I’m in love with,” Ali says — and that includes the brand’s striped place mats, which come in a variety of vibrant color combinations, including a delightful lilac and sage green pairing. “A two-color or three-color stripe [combination] lends itself to so many different iterations if you can play with one of the colors,” she says. And if you mix multiple stripe combinations — as Dusen Dusen allows with its mixed place-mat option — your tablescaping skills are top notch.
Inspired by her childhood in France, Ali has a soft spot for Provençal-style place-mats like these, which feature botanical designs. Though the ones her family uses are from France, these linen ones are the most similar mats that she’s been able to find over the years. Designed by Parisian artist Bruno Lamy, the mats are handmade by Indian artisans because of Lamy’s passion for the age-old Indian technique of hand-block printing.
Scalloped place mats
Your average place mat is going to be round or rectangular, but scalloped ones will add more dimension to your table. Of the many scalloped options that Torres Portnof recommends, this flower-shaped one is especially durable because it’s made of banana bark, which can withstand cleaning with a damp towel. Torres Portnof recommends pairing these with a tablecloth. “If you’re doing a tablecloth, you don’t really want another fabric material on top of that because that can just look cumbersome and too much,” she advises. “But because the petal fiber is a woven fiber, that could look good against a normal cotton or linen tablecloth.”
If you’re looking for something that will “make the table pop on its own,” Massih recommends these, which he discovered from his prop stylist when they were shooting his cookbook, Keep It Zesty. They’re on Ali’s wish list, too. And since she has Gilmore Girls on the brain, she’d like to place the olive ones in an autumnal tablescape that includes gold flatware, eucalyptus leaves, terracotta glasses, and mustard-colored plates. Just note: Massih says you’ll have to iron them after a wash. “And who has time to iron anything nowadays,” he adds.
Torres Portnof typically shops at smaller vendors — Coming Soon in particular — when she wants something special to punch up an otherwise “too non-personal” table. This place mat, which is striped, scalloped, and a bit shimmery, “fits that bill,” she says. Gohar also makes non-striped ones that feature feet-shaped pearls, and are some of Faria and Barquet’s favorite place mats, too. “Their linen quality is just really fantastic,” Faria says. “It’s so nice to just touch and interact with all of the linens that they make.”
Polonsky rotates between these jewel-toned place mats and her Plaza Bolivar place mats. These take the scalloping to a new level with the addition of half moon cutouts and whimsical patches featuring flowers and such. “I think it doesn’t work for everyone,” Polonsky says, “But for us, we have pretty neutral ceramics — it’s all clay but it’s kind of imperfect, but it’s not crazy colorful — and so I love to have more colorful place mats.” Just note: you’ll have to take these velvet place mats to the dry cleaners.
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