The short history of mats

Image via Wikipedia

First mats were made in 19th century. The beginning of this manufacture, as making mats was for many years, is sometimes connected with weaving baskets. The earliest ones were constructed by interlacing blades of grass, leave or reed placed at a 90 degree angle.

The common form given was a check pattern or check weave. A few shards recovered tell of the weaver attempting to give the mat strength or padding. To accomplish this extra layers of material were placed upon the woven blades.
As mat is a general name for a piece of flat material that lies on the floor and other flat surfaces, it has a wide range of types that various in sizes, colors, designs (like stripe mat, mat with 'kitchen' inscription or leaves) purposes and materials that are made of.

Depending on country and part of the world used materials might be totally different. Usually it is a sort of floor covering but it also has a different purposes and different names, often for domestic usage. For example a hindu principal substances are straw, dwarf palm, coconut palm, and screw pine. Grasses are also used in Japan and in Eastern countries.

In Europe materials are different but domestic usage may stay the same. We have door mat, that helps keeping the dirt from shoes at bay when first entering the home. That kind of mat, which is also called an entrance mat or a 'welcome mat', is usually made of good tough materials like: nylon, rubber (a type of rubber mat is also used in cars) stalks, or aluminium and other metals (if we don't want to have a washable doormat that might be washed in a washing machine).

And there is also a bathroom mat which is a surface that is absorbing small amount of water when out of bath or after having a shower. Usually bath mats are non slip mats that provide a warm non-slip surface.

Nowadays, mats aren't only floor coverings, which are stain stoppers and helping to keep the floor clean. There are also used in marketing and it is called logo mat.

Choose best floor covering for you - maybe a stripe mat for bath mats?

Redecorating bathroom with a small budget

Image by Kevin H. via Flickr

If you have an old looking bathroom trying to make it look brand new doesn't have to be so expensive as it seems. You just need a good idea and all will close in a quite small budget.

Of course the bathroom should be functional and its look isn't so important. But from many reasons the way it looks may change our mood and give our home more exclusive look in general. The more sophisticated bathroom, the more higher standard of our house.

It seems that budget might be a great trouble to make bathroom look nice. But not if you know how to redecorate it with a few good ideas and some fantasy. So how can you do that?

1. Choose one theme.
Think about one theme that suits you the most. The amount of things that you can choose of is very big. You can decide on some shells, boats or even flowers. This theme will lead in all decorations that will appear in you bathroom.

2. Decide on specific colors.
Keeping bathroom and its decorations in one or two leading colors might change its look. It won't look so ordinary but very classy. This will also help you organize you shopping, cause in most of shops with decorations things are placed in colors.

3. Buy a cheap paint.
That's not a problem to buy a cheap paint. You just have to look around in shops if there are some sales of paints that were premixed and then not purchased. Or spend some time on comparing prices in your local stores, or use a mixture of your old painting with a little bit of new one.

If you decide try to imagine how your bathroom may look like. Let's take an example. Assuming that you leading theme is seashell, colors blue and brown and the painting is in some light brown color, what can you do with that?

Seashell is very good scheme for bathrooms. And also quite inexpensive. In almost every home you can find some shells brought home from a holiday trip over the sea. Some of them are large and some of them are small, but all of them you can use at your bathroom. Small shells you can put in a different sizes jars that you might find in stores with home accessories (or in your kitchen). Those jars you can put all over your bathroom – only if you find the place for it and will leave you space for something else. You might also prepare some jars in a sand in it. Big seashells can be putted freely.

Seashell as a theme might be also a big part of your bathroom accessories. Shower curtains, waste basket, toothbrush holder, towels, floor coverings, plate for a soap, candles etc., all of them might be with ”ocean” ornament. But if the leading theme will be on too many decorations it will look trash not exclusive. And that's the moment when the leading colors might be helpful. In this case bathroom mats might be brown or blue with no seashell theme. They can match the floor mats in the rest of the house – maybe in color or size. All of those items you can find in very cheap prices.

Before you put all of those items into your bathroom you should paint it first. It will probably take some time till its dry. And then you can slowly ad some of those new decorations, observing everyday if that's what you want in your bathroom and if not just replacing the items.

That is how you can redecorate your bathroom in low budget – just a little bit of imagination and a good idea is all you need.

Wanna buy some great quality floor coverings, bathroom mats and floor mats?