Grounding Mat: King

Seventy-six inches by twenty-seven, in non-slip carbon-infused vegan leather, with a fifteen foot cord. This is the one sized to lie across a king bed rather than sit under a desk, which is the whole argument for it over the small mats: the small ones only work while some part of you is touching them, and people move in their sleep.

Here is what the mat physically is, with no interpretation on top. It is a conductive surface with a cord that plugs into the round third hole of a wall outlet, the ground pin, through a 100,000 ohm resistor built into the cord. The resistor is there on purpose: you are not bonded to the ground, you are referenced to it, and no meaningful current can flow in either direction. What resting on it does is hold your body near the building's ground reference rather than letting it float, and a floating body picks up the 60 hertz hum of the wiring in the walls. You can watch that on a multimeter; the reading drops when you touch the mat. That much is physics and nobody argues about it.

Two things get said about this that are not quite right, and we would rather say so. It is not the same as standing barefoot on soil: a building's ground runs back to the service panel, where it is bonded to the utility neutral, and that normally sits a little above the potential of the dirt outside. And it is not a circuit, because a circuit carries current and this one is deliberately built not to.

What that does for you is where we are going to be straight with you. The best study in the area is randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled: fifty-six people finished it, mats used six hours a day for a month. Read carefully, it found the grounded group slept measurably longer than the placebo group and scored better on insomnia severity a week later. It did not find better sleep quality scores than placebo; both groups improved about equally on those. It was funded by grants from two companies, at least one of which sells earthing mattresses. Much of the rest of the literature comes from a small group of authors who sell grounding products or run an institute that certifies practitioners in them. Sleep researchers outside that circle say we do not know yet. Nobody has shown the pain and inflammation claims to a standard that would satisfy a skeptic. If a shop tells you a mat reduces inflammation, they are ahead of the evidence. We would rather you buy this knowing that than find out afterward.

It is thirty dollars more than the small mats and the reason is area, not material. All three are the same carbon-infused vegan leather. This one is 2,052 square inches against 384, which is more than five times the surface, and on a bed that is the difference between a mat you have to stay in contact with and one you cannot really roll off.

So who should buy one. People who feel they sleep better after a day outside barefoot and want to see whether anything follows them indoors in winter. People for whom a deliberate object at the foot of the bed is itself part of the practice, the same way an altar cloth is. And people who are simply curious and can spare the money to find out. All of those are good reasons. None of them requires the science to be settled.

Good to Know

76 by 27 inches. Non-slip carbon-infused vegan leather. Includes a 15 foot cord with a 100K ohm resistor, for a standard US outlet. Wipe the surface with a damp cloth and a mild detergent if it needs it. Do not submerge it and do not machine wash it.

One thing that actually matters and almost nobody mentions. A grounding mat does absolutely nothing unless the ground pin in your outlet is genuinely connected to earth, and in older houses a great many of them are not; the hole is there, the wire behind it is not. Test the outlet before you trust the mat. A three-light outlet tester from a hardware store takes five seconds, and the GAYA tester checks the mat itself. Between the two you have ruled out the common failures. The one they miss is a bootleg ground, where somebody has jumpered neutral to ground at the socket; that reads as correct wiring on a three-light tester and it is the case where a mat could actually carry voltage. If your wiring is old or you do not know who did it last, have an electrician look. Unplug during a serious thunderstorm, the same as you would a computer. If you have a pacemaker or any implanted device, ask the device manufacturer rather than us or the mat's maker.

Try It With

The grounding tester, which is how you confirm the mat and the outlet are both live. The 24 by 16 inch mat is the desk version if you want one in both places. More in wellness.