The Very Best Place Mats, According to People Whose Taste We Trust

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“This won’t come as a surprise to anyone who reads my newsletterDinner: 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 authorJenny 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 editorHilary 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 writerRebecca Firkserdescribes 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 designerPeter Somdescribes 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.”

Known for its stain- and odor-resistant wool home goods, Graf Lantz is one of those brands often hovering in the Strategist Hive Mind (its coasters are inthe Kitchen 100, after all). Strategist senior writer Michael Zhao recommends the brand’s place mats, which, he says, “pair well with your typical millennial-coded design-y minimalist dishes (think Heath, Hasami or Jono Pandolfi).” After using them for three years, Zhao reports the place mats haven’t degraded at all. Though the lighter colors will, unsurprisingly, show stains more easily than darker shades, he says each can be spot cleaned with a dab of mild soap or Woolite detergent on a wet dish towel. Best of all, he reports, they double astrivets: “I can pop a Le Creuset fresh from the oven directly on top and not have to worry about the wood beneath.”

Anna Polonsky, founder of the branding and design consultancyPolonsky & 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 ofComing 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.

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“‘Easy to wipe down’ is a key requirement of place mats in my household that involves children,” says Strategist senior editorJen 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 recommendsthese delightful, and very affordable, ones from Target.)

Here’s another place mat that you don’t have to worry about staining. While I typically usea set of beautiful Provençal-style place matsthat I bought in New Orleans, I swap them out for these cotton ones from Amazon on nights when my boyfriend and I are eating the messier dishes in our repertoire. When we inevitably spill some mapo tofu or tomato sauce on the mats, we’ll just throw them in the wash and let them air-dry. After enduring more than six months of regular wear and tear, the mats look about the same as they did on day one — just a little less blue, a result of repeated washing.

It’s hard to write about place mats without mentioning Chilewich, the brand whose woven vinyl place mats have beenspotted everywherefrom Le Bernardin and Boulud Sud to the Lotte New York Palace Hotel. Reid recently added these to her place-mat repertoire after she and her fiancé started using a black lacquer kitchen table in their apartment setup. A flat and slightly grippy option that prevents liquids from seeping through, the place mats fit the bill for a set that “could ‘live’ on the table all the time to protect it from daily use,” Reid says. She’s owned them for a few months and has no complaints so far; meanwhile, Masih has owned his for about six years and reports they’re holding up well, with no peeling or curling to be seen.

For a sturdy place mat that still has a little flair, consider these cotton ones that recipe developer and food content creatorChristine Hanpicked up last year. She uses them as her everyday place mats and says that they easily match with many of her dishes. Unlike other place mats on this list, the Città mats are reversible, so you’re basically getting two place mats for the price of one. Another benefit: You can just flip them over when they’re dirty — or simply throw them in the wash. “They’re stylish and easy to maintain,” Han says.

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 itsmixed 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.

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