Badminton Mats – Description, Price, and Assembly Instructions

Introduction

There are very few things that make a bigger impact on a game of badminton than the surface it is played on. When playing at an amateur level, your only option is usually to use the floor from the sports hall you are in. If you are playing in a multifunctional hall, this means that you are using the same surface that you would use for other sports such as basketball or volleyball.

As you can imagine, this is not the ideal surface, but more a compromise between functional and affordable. However, this can, in some cases, cause problems for badminton players, especially because certain sports hall surfaces can be too slippery for badminton high-speed games. Moreover, certain types of floors used in sports hall do not absorb bounces very well, which is also important when playing badminton. Last, but not least, playing in a multifunctional hall means that also the lines that mark the other sports will be present, which can often cause confusion when playing badminton.

How is this solved at the professional level? Well, badminton mats are used. These mats have all the required characteristics in order to enhance gameplay and to protect the players’ health. Moreover, this ensures that the proper measurements for the court are maintained as the lines are printed within the badminton mats.

In this post, we are going to distill everything there is to know about badminton mats, starting with their characteristics, materials or prices, continuing with a comparison with the other surfaces and the mats’ advantages and finishing with some assembly information.

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Characteristics

Although the sizes of a badminton court are fixed, the sizes of the mats can vary a little bit, especially if you use others than the recommended by the Badminton World Federation. To give you two examples of the recommended ones, the Yonex AC367 is 15.4 meters long by 7.2 meters wide. The Yonex AC360, on the other hand, is 15 meters long by 7.1 meters wide.

Regarding its thickness, it can also vary, although the most common ones tend to have a thickness of around 3-5mm.

As for their weight, although they can also vary, the recommeded ones are generally around 300 kilograms.

Last, but not least, is the colour. In general, badminton mats are green with white lines, although you can find them in a lot of different colours, like blue, red, yellow, orange or grey as background colours, and all imaginable colours for the lines.

Below you can find a table where we have listed all the data:

Size	15 metres x 7 metres (approximately)
Total Thickness	3-5 millimetres
Weight	300 kilograms (approximately)
Colour	Normally green with white lines, also blue/red/yellow/orange/grey ground possible with all possible colours for lines

Layers & Material

Badminton mats are divided in several layers, with each one of them having a specific role to ensure the best game performance and health of the players. Again, there are a lot of different brands offering slightly different products, but the main components are as follows:

Layer 1 (The top layer)

It is formed by a durable PVC material. The texture, which is very abrasive, is designed in order for the players to achieve excellent traction during the matches. This is needed due to the fast and sudden changes of direction that players undertake while playing. A top surface without this characteristic would lower the quality of the matches dramatically, as players would be less able to react to the shots from the other player.

This layer is usually green and gives the badminton mats its appearance. If you would like to know why are badminton courts green, check our post “Why are badminton courts green?“, where we answer this question.

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Layer 2 (Wear layer)

After this top PVC layer, which is designed to ensure maximum traction, there is usually a glass fibre mesh, which is sometimes also called wear layer. As the name indicates, this layer’s purpose is to ensure that the wear and tear of the product are not too fast. Its presence ensures that the mat resists longer even under very tough use.

Layer 3 (Stability layer)

The third layer that is usually found is usually called the stability layer. This layer, usually a superior mesh fabric material, ensures the stability of the mat, which improves the movement of the players on the court due to the lack of movement of the surface below.

Layer 4 (The bottom layer – Foam Layer)

The last layer that is usually found in a badminton mat is a foam layer. This PVC foam layer ensures a good bounce absorption so that when players jump or change direction, the bounces on the mat are absorbed and the players’ joints suffer much less, ensuring the health and performance of the athletes.

Certification

There is a certification process in order to ensure that the badminton mats are of the highest quality. The Badminton World Federation (BWF) controls this process, and you can find all about it in the following link.

BWF EQUIPMENT CERTIFICATION PROGRAMME FLOORING

Moreover, they also keep track of all the mats that have been certified, which you can see in the following link.

http://bwfcorporate.com/events/approved-flooring/

If a badminton mat is not in the list it does not mean that the quality is not good. It simply means that the Badminton World Federation has not certified it, so they cannot ensure it reaches their standards.

Please note that also other types of floors are certified, although they are not the preferred system for competitions.

BWF Preferred Supplier

The Badminton World Federation also keeps a list of the preferred supplier for the court mats. This is the supplier they use in the events that they organise, such as the World Championships. You can find the current supplier in here: https://corporate.bwfbadminton.com/events/preferred-equipment-suppliers/

At the time of this writing, the preferred supplier is Yonex, the most well-known brand in the badminton world.

Price

Regarding the price, it can vary a lot depending on which badminton mat you buy. Moreover, it also depends a lot on which country you live. However, for the most known brands, the price is in the thousands of dollars, which makes it a very expensive piece of equipment to buy. That is the reason why, in general, you can only find badminton mats in national or international competitions and in professional badminton clubs.

As an example, you can buy the Yonex AC367, which the BWF also uses in some of its competitions, for 11.000 € (around $12.500) at the time of this writing in the following page:

https://www.centrodeldeporte.com/en/complements/1638-badminton-court-mat-yonex-ac367-4-piezas.html

Other surfaces

As badminton mats are so expensive, badminton is played on other surfaces at an amateur or semi-professional level. These surfaces are, obviously, not the perfect for the practice of badminton. However, some of these other surfaces still provide a good support for the matches and the enjoyment of the game. They are as follows:

Timber Flooring:

Timber flooring is a very common material used in sports halls, so you might find yourself playing on this surface if you play in a multi-functional hall. It is a good alternative to badminton mats for amateur or semi-professional badminton players. Its worse characteristic is that it becomes slippery very easily, which can complicate the game dramatically. This happens not only if sweat or damp falls on the surface. It also happens if the sports hall is not clean enough and a bit of dust has settled on the surface.

Polymeric and Sheet Flooring:

Vinyl, linoleum, rubber and composites are widely used materials for sports floor surfaces. They can be found both in sheet form and as jointless surface that is applied on site. Due to its reduced thickness, the surface onto which is laid is a very important factor on the performance of this type of floors. In general, though, they offer better traction resistance than the timber flooring surfaces, but their shock absorption tends to be sub-par, which can be a problem if you play on them for a long time.

As we said, however, its performance, and especially its shock absorption will depend largely on the surface onto which the polymeric material is laid, so it is also possible to find some of these floors with a good shock absorption. How can you know? Well, you will feel it when you are playing. If you feel like the floor “compresses” a little bit when you land on the surface after you jump, helping your landing be softer, then you shouldn’t worry too much about it. If, on the other hand, you don’t have this feeling, then you know you are playing on a surface without any absorption characteristics.

For more information about types of floors for indoors sports (not specific to badminton), the following link from Sports England is a very useful resource:

https://www.sportengland.org/media/4553/floors-for-indoor-sports.pdf

Advantages of mats compared to other surfaces

In the section above we have already highlighted the main characteristics that make the other surfaces worse than the badminton mats. There are, however, other advantages to badminton mats. Below is a list of all the advantages of badminton mats as compared to other surfaces:

• Absorb impact better than hard floors
• Offer a better grip, which helps to reduce injuries and can improve gameplay.
• Lines are easily seen, no confusion with other lines
• PVC flooring has better safety, shock absorption and better rebound resilience
• Installation and maintenance cost is low

Assembly

The assembly of the badminton mats will depend largely on the specific mat that you choose. At the end of this section, you can find three links to youtube videos where three different types are explained. However, there are several steps that all the badminton mats share.

1. Unroll the mats: When not used or just delivered, the badminton mats are folded in a roll. This is both to avoid damaging the mat with creases and in order to occupy less space. Before you unroll the mats, please make sure that the floor is clean and dry.
2. Line the mats up: Due to their size, the badminton mats are usually separated in 4-5 pieces. Therefore, when unrolling the mats, you will have to make sure that the different pieces are lined up so that the lines are perfectly straight and continuous.
3. Check for air pockets: Make sure that there are no trapped air pockets below the surface. To take them out, you can use either the rolls with which the mats come or a clean cloth.
4. Fix the different parts: The way to fix them will depend on the type of mat you use. Some of them use tape, while Yonex, for example, offers a unique zipping system that is more convenient and more resistant to separation.

In case of being mounted for a competition, the mats will need to be checked by the relevant badminton official before they are deemed to be acceptable for play.

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Summary

With this, we have arrived at the end of this guide on badminton mats. At the beginning of this post, we started with a brief introduction to the badminton mats, describing afterwards its main characteristics and sizes. Following that, we went into detail about the layer division and what each layer achieves for the game. Next, we have explained the price range for badminton mats and we have compared it to other surfaces, highlighting the advantages that badminton mats bring to the gameplay. Last, but not least, we have provided some information about the assembly of the product.