tatami mat opinions

[trinket]

a local store has a sale on tatami mats. i've never had a house with them, but we never wear shoes in the house - and they could be a nice change.

do you have an opinion? I'm especially interested in how they compare to carpet/floorboards. better/worse?

I'm concerned that they might be frail or difficult to clean.

_trinket

[gunpwdr]

Tatami isn't all that comfortable. That's pretty much why every Japanese house has sandals for you to wear when you've taken your regular shoes off. It looks good though.

Me personally, I like hardwood for everything. Black hardwood, dark walnut, hickory even. It adds up quickly though.

If you're looking for a change, carpet tiles are a pretty accessible way of mixing things up. Check out Inteface Flor (www.interfaceflor.com) for some examples. I'm doing a lot of this in my new house... along with hardwood and berber carpeting. You can always move the tiles around to change the pattern/colors up. Coincidentally, my wife and I have talked about doing a tea room replete with tatami and shoji.

Dunno if this helps...

[BKNY]

If your thinking Real Tatami...it will have to be installed for you. About an inch and a half thick.

Very Very expensive. If your talking tatami mats that is a whole diff ball game, they are pretty cheap but not near the same effect

Life...I wonder...will it take me under?

[BKNY]

Also the mats wear out fast and little peices get everywhere. Plus very hard to keep in one place even with an adhesive its tuff

Life...I wonder...will it take me under?

[kiteless]

I got this ridiculous idea few years ago with an architect that I would have tatami mats in one of the rooms - probably as a part of a process to acknowledge my cultural heritage, or something like that - which is funny because my family flew in wooden floors and terracotta tiles from italy to get rid of the tatami mats in the 70s

there are quasi rules to how they should be laid out in the room - in the past all floor plan were based around the measurement and length and width ratios of tatami mats in order to make the mats fit the room easier. don't expect your edwardian townhouse to be compatible with this medieval japanese metric.

also, they weigh tonnes and is a bitch as far as maintenance goes. spillage? it sunk in nanoseconds. vacuuming isn't supposed to be an ordinary affair - and they mold. but they look and smell nice, and do wonders to your blood circulation (at least thats what my mother used to say).

my idea was to have it as a subdued detail to an otherwise matt white room with detailings in bleached birch or teak wood.

Edited by kiteless on Aug 21, 2005 at 09:00 AM

[takashi]

Tatami mats are of a standard size: 180cm long by 90cm wide. It's important that they are exactly half as wide as they are long, because this enables them to be laid out in different patterns. (So 2 tatami mats side-by-side make a 180cm square).

Rooms in Japanese houses are sized so they hold an exact number of tatami mats -- 3, 6, 8, and so on. -- it's common to speak of a room as being 'a 6-mat room', 'a 3-mat room', etc. This is significant because the room itself holds the mats in place (since they fit it wall-to-wall). Most western rooms are obviously not designed this way, and will consequently have oddly-shaped spaces and edges 'left over', so requiring some kind of retaining system to keep the mats from slipping around.

Real tatami is made with a straw core ('wara doko') covered with a thin rush or reed mat which is stitched to the core. The long edges of the mat are bound with a decorative border called a 'heri' -- sometimes these are highly ornate, sometimes just plain brown or black. Black is associated with temples or shrines, so you don't often see it private homes. Real tatami is quite heavy and rather expensive. Plus, being 100% natural straw in its core, it is prone to becoming infested with 'tatami-mushi' -- little white-coloured bugs which live in the straw, particulary during hot and humid summer months. Because it is basically bound straw, some countries consider real tatami to be an 'agricultural item' and restrict its import unless fumigation procedures, etc, are followed. Another problem is mould due to the damp when there is poor ventilation. Traditional Japanese houses have slat wooden floors and spaces under the floorboards where air circulates. If you lay straw tatami on a concrete floor, or on a carpet, you will almost certainly get problems of mould eventually, since the straw cannot breathe properly.

Cheaper alternatives to real waradoko tatami are various forms of foam-core tatami. This is what you mostly run into outside Japan, and indeed it is used a lot inside Japan too. It is lighter, cheaper, and doesn't have the 'tatami-mushi' problem. It is also less susceptible to mould due to poor ventilation. The outside is still covered with the same rush mat, which when new is slighly shiny and will resist spills (if wiped up quickly). Still, esthetically, the feel of foam-core tatami cannot be compared to real waradoko: foam-core tatami feels too 'springy' and insubstantial by comparison -- it's like a foam mattress versus a proper wool mattress.

The rush cover will eventually wear out, and should be replaced every couple of years. (Actually, as an economy measure, it can be flipped over and re-stitched after a year or so, thereby doubling its life). The cover starts out green an slowly turns yellow with exposure to light.

At the bottom of the quality list is foam-core tatami where even the rush covering is artificial -- several forms of plastic, or plastic-coating are used for this. These types or tatami are generally pretty cheap and nasty, and not much pleasure to sit on.

As kiteless stated above, there are quasi-rules on how to lay out tatami mats, although you have a considerable amount of freedom in doing so. Any good book on Japanese interior design will show you how it's done. One pattern which should generally be avoided in home use is to line all the mats up in parallel -- this pattern is often associated with funerals, and will create an unsettling impression amongst your Japanese friends.

It is well-known that Japanese do not wear shoes in the house -- they generally wear slippers instead (or sometime go in stocking feet). On tatami, however, you must not even wear slippers -- only socks or bare feet are allowed, because anything else will, over time, damage the delicate rush cover. There are special brooms, and even special vacuum-cleaner attachments, to keep them clean.

Anyway, it is worth knowing something about tatami and its uses before you decide you would like it as a 'design feature' in yo

[trinket]

thanks for the advice. especially takashi for the informative essay.

the ones available here are quite expensive and heavy - some with decorated borders, but after hearing your advice - it sounds like they won't work for our bedroom (on top of carpet, the door opens into the room, and occasionally water could blow in from the balcony).

_trinket