Best Play Mats in the UK

Young toddlers love anything that provides external sources of stimulation for their learning and creativity. With the Tiny Love Black and White Gymini Baby Play Mat, you can rest assured that your baby will have plenty of stimulation to keep them occupied during their play time. This play mat features two intersecting arches that have an adjustable design to let you set it in the best position to allow your baby full access to the toys that hang from it. Among these is a hedgehog that plays music when the toy is played with, which is sure to capture your baby's attention and hold it. Also featured is a take-along book that contains various shapes and images that will help foster your child's creativity while also helping to develop their communication skills when they show you or a friend their favourite images.

The mat itself is surprisingly comfortable and should provide a safe and comfortable play space for any child that is 6 months old or younger. The adjustable arches are also removable and can be put in place or removed whenever necessary. The various included toys that hang from the arches are also durable enough to withstand strong play from your child, so you shouldn't need to worry about them breaking easily. If there is anything to complain about here, it would be that the various components don't really fit together well in order to store inside a box when not in use, although this is a minor complaint. Overall, we are certain that any baby should find their time on this play mat to be a fun and stimulating experience.

Children love to identify with familiar characters, especially those from their favourite films. The creators of the Bright Starts Finding Nemo Ocean Baby Activity Gym and Play Mat were well aware of this when they created their play mat to feature characters from the Disney film Finding Nemo. The cute fish characters adorn this play mat and will be sure to garner instant recognition and delight from your young child.

Of course, this play mat doesn't rely solely on having recognizable characters in order to provide a fun and exciting space for your infant. Featuring a canopy design with arches that hold various toys in the shape of Finding Nemo characters, your child will find this play mat to be one of their favourite places to spend time, keeping them captivated with plenty of audio and visual stimulation.

The toys contain more than 20 minutes of musical melodies that will play when the toys are interacted with, providing a fun audio experience for your infant. On top of that, the provided canopy not only helps give a fully entertaining and visually stimulating view whether your child is on their back or belly, but also even includes magical lights that will be sure to delight any child.

Assembling and disassembling the mat are both quite easy, and should take no more than a minute. The mat is also very easy to clean, so your child can enjoy a freshly clean space to play. Overall, there simply aren't many drawbacks to this play mat, making this a great purchase for any infant up to 3 years of age.

When it comes to toys and other items meant for a baby's amusement, the more that it has that can help stimulate your young one's mind, the better. Thankfully, this is exactly what you get with the Baby Einstein 4-in-1 Kickin' Tunes Music Play Mat. With 70 sounds and 7 toys to explore in multi-sensory play, this playmat will spark your child's curiosity and help stimulate their creativity from day one. The mat features the typical crossbars that you tend to find on other similar playmats, from which most of the included toys hang. Rather than just being standard plastic crossbars, though, these are padded to help make them more pleasant to the touch as well as to provide a safer place for your child to play. The included pillow with support also helps to make the time spent playing on the mat as comfortable as possible.

Of course, this playmat includes more than just toys and bright colours for visual stimulation. You also get some pretty relaxing and fun tunes with a total playtime of 25 minutes included that will play while your baby spends time on the mat. What's more, the included songs feature phrases in four different languages: English, Spanish, French, and German. This can help give your young one exposure to foreign languages, which can be extremely helpful for them to grow up becoming a polyglot. If you're looking for a playmat for your child of 3 years or younger, then there is plenty to love about this particular model.

One of the downsides to many of the playmats featured on this list is that their small dimensions mean that your child will inevitably outgrow it, probably sooner rather than later. On top of that, once the child is old enough to start moving around on their own, such small playmats will most often not hold the child in place for very long. If you're looking for a good solution to this problem, then the Galt Toys, Inc. Wool Large Playmat should be right up your alley. Featuring a large size of 100 cm x 100 cm, your young one will have plenty of space to play, roll over, and crawl around, all while being given the same type of visual stimulation that such a young child needs.

Just having a large footprint is far from all that this playmat has going for it. The mat itself is very nicely decorated with bright, colourful images that will help stimulate your child's visual senses. Along with these images, you also get different textures as well as a few attached toys that provide both touch and audio stimulation, helping to ensure that your child won't grow bored as there is plenty to do while on the mat.

What's really nice about this large mat, though, is that you won't have to worry about your child quickly outgrowing it. Even once they are old enough to start crawling, this playmat can still provide a nice, comfortable play area. About the only downside we can find here is that the mat does tend to wrinkle quite easily, but keeping it folded up nicely while not in use should help prevent the wrinkles from getting too bad. All in all, this large playmat is a great option for those who want something bigger than what the other playmats provide.

To take a departure from the other products that have been reviewed here, this pack of 27 foam play tiles gives you the ability to help create a fun and exciting play environment for your child. Unlike the other mats in this review, these play tiles are made of foam and contain interlocking edges that allow you to create not only a large, comfortable play area for your young one, but also even create some interesting shapes and designs as well.

Each foam pad included in this set measures 29 cm x 29 cm, and also provides enough thickness to help create a comfortable environment in any room, even if they are placed on a hard floor. Each mat is coloured in one of 6 different colours, allowing you to create either matched or mismatched patterns for the play surface. Children who are just learning how to talk will love being able to identify and say each of the colours, while also having their imagination stimulated.

As we mentioned before, these tiles are useful for more than just using as a playmat. Thanks to the design of the interlocking edges, you can also create certain shapes with each tile, including a square box, rectangle, or even a shape that looks similar to a house with a roof. In short, the play tiles can serve as their own toys, helping to spark your child's imagination while giving them a safe and comfortable place to play.