Should you use placemats on a glass table?

Placemat prerogatives!  

My daughter Alexandra, who lives in England, adores entertaining and hosting dinner parties. Her lovely dining room table is always dressed for a party with a white damask or linen tablecloth, a timeless traditional choice. 

However, during months of lockdown with four children (including a set of four-year-old twins!), three meals a day take place in the kitchen on the lengthy wooden antique refectory table, sans a white damask tablecloth, avec placemats! She posed several questions to me about placemats, because now she only has contempt for them! In her words, “It is just one more thing to clean after endless meals... why do we even need them!?” 

Tablecloths have been adorning dining tables for ages, and are thought to have come to Europe in the first century A.D. Their Lilliputian cousin, the placemat, is a neoteric invention! In the twentieth century, bright colors and patterns began to emerge as “placemats” instead of a tablecloth. Much easier to clean and less expensive! Placemats began to be used for both informal and formal occasions, depending on the fabric.

Why use placemats? 

To protect the table from scratches when plates are moving around, and from heated plates. I also think they add a liveliness to the table!

Do they need to match the plates, napkins, and walls? 

Placemats add a decorative aspect to the table.  The color of the room, along with decorative details such as the porcelain plates, napkins, centerpiece or floral arrangement, should all be taken into consideration when choosing a placemat to adorn your table.  

How long does the placemat stay on the table? 

Placemats stay on the table for the entire meal, unlike the use of a charger, which is removed before the main course, or before dessert is served.

What size placemat is best to use? 

Linen placemats are approximately 12” x 18”. If you are going to use placemats, I think that a table has a glorious appeal with more of the handsome, polished wood showing. Hence, I collect smaller placemats! The silver and crystal have a certain sparkle when set on the wood, especially when enhanced with candlelight.

Placemats for your table have been around for many years, although no one really knows exactly when their use become common. Its almost universal that people in countries all around the world use placemats for their tables. Recent surveys found that up to 90% of USA households surveyed used placemats on a regular basis.

Below are some excerpts from recent online surveys of the reason that households use placemats:

We’ve assembled the top 5 reasons how placemats improve your life:

1) They Protect Your Table’s Surface

2) They Decorate and Add Esthetics

3) They are Convenient and Green Conscious

4) Provide Entertainment

5) Increase Sanitation and Noise Reduction

Placemats Protect Your Table and Counter Surfaces

The primary function of placemats is to protect your dining table and counters from water marks, food stains or heat damage.

Placemats Add Decoration and Esthetics To Your Table

Placemats also serve as decorations to coordinate with color or motif themes and for special holidays and events. Esthetically, many people feel that it adds to the beauty of a table to add color and vibrancy whereas they also reduces noise pollution by softening the clanging of dinnerware and cutlery.

Placemats Are Convenient, Green Conscious, And Reduce Noise

Placemats are also a very convenient to keep your table clean and to avoid endless wash cycles of table cloths. Our PP plastic placemats wipe clean with a damp cloth and can be used over and over.  They;ll last for ever but when you get tired of them, just pitch them in the recycle bin to give them a new life as another product.  Placemats also reduce the noise and clatter associated with glass, ceramics and metal cutlery coming in direct contact with table and counter surfaces.

Placemats for Entertainment

Placemats for kids can be an endless source of fun and entertainment and subconsciously allow learning to continue during meal time. And, in some restaurants, placemats are used to advertise menu items, specials, local businesses, fun facts, trivia, or provide games for children.  A marker and a plastic placemat make a great art project for kids and adults alike.

Placemats Aid in Sanitation

And, one of the most important ways that placemats can help to improve your life is to provide a sanitary sound barrier between your table (or desk) and your food both at home or when eating out.  More and more people work from home so the dining table is commonly the center for eating and working making it even more important to consider sanitation. Likewise, if you eat from your desk at work, you need protection there too, so whip out a plastic placemat and protect yourself!  

Below is some research we found on kitchen and table sanitation:

• The

  Web MD website

  reports that….”it’s the kitchen that actually harbors more bacteria than any other room in the home. And these germs — the same ones that can cause a cold or flu to spread through a household like wildfire – lurk everywhere…Consider this: One single bacteria cell can become more than 8 million cells in less than 24 hours! The number of bacteria it takes to make people sick can range from as few as 10 up to millions. And infections spread when germs are transferred from a contaminated item (say, your cutting board) to your hands to your body.”
• ABC News Consumer Correspondent Elisabeth Leamy went undercover at 10 restaurants in three states. She took swab samples from 10 surfaces you come typically in contact with at a restaurant. Then Dr. Philip Tierno and his team at the New York University Microbiology Department lab tested the samples. The #5 dirtiest place was Tables!
• And, in another separate investigation at the University of Arizona, a 2007 study found that the average desktop has 100 times more bacteria than a kitchen table and 400 times more than the average toilet seat. “Desks are really bacteria cafeterias,” said Charles Gerba, a microbiologist who’s studied dirty desks, in a UA press release several years ago. “They’re breakfast buffets, lunch tables and snack bars, as we spend more and more hours at the office. Treat your desktop like you would your kitchen table and counters at home,” says Smithson. “Clean all surfaces, whether at home or work, before you prepare or eat food on them.”

So, it’s clear that placemats improve your life.

Bright of America® durable placemats give years of service in homes, canteens, and restaurants.  We cater to organizational and business customers to create designs that stand out from the crowd.

Contact us today for more info on our lines of custom placemats and other products