Comparisons, including the ones that stop a mistake

Read these before buying anything ESD

These two are not here to win a search. They are here because people arrive with the wrong mental model, and one of the confusions is a safety issue rather than a purchasing one.

• ESD floor matting and ESD bench matting are not the same product
  Both are black, both are ESD rated, both come from the same suppliers. They do different jobs and buying the wrong one is a wasted few hundred pounds.
• ESD matting is not electrical insulating matting, and the difference matters
  This is the one confusion on this site that is genuinely dangerous, so it gets its own page and no sales language.

Choosing between kits

• One big mat, or a kit of interlocking tiles
  There is a good argument against interlocking matting, made by a credible manufacturer, and it is worth answering rather than ignoring.
• Anti-fatigue or anti-slip: which one your floor needs
  These two get compared as if they were different grades of the same thing. They are not. One is about what happens under you, the other about what happens between your boot and the surface.
• Drainage grid or solid top
  One decision, decided entirely by whether your floor is wet in normal operation. Not whether it gets mopped once a week.
• Interlocking tiles or roll matting
  These are bought for different jobs and compared on price as if they were the same job. Sometimes roll matting genuinely is the right answer.