Playground floor materials can become overlooked on the playground. This is because keeping kids safe and engaged on the playground involves a wide range of other elements:
- Ensuring varied, safe equipment made from suitable, long-lasting materials
- Providing appropriate supervision for play and sports activities
- Installing high quality safer surfacing options.
Our top recommended playground floor materials include:
- Wetpour
- Artificial Grass
- Rubber Mulch
- Thermoplastic Playground Markings
- Safer grass mats
- Play Carpet
Does your outdoor play area meet our top criteria for a safe and fun playground flooring design?
1. Fall protection Underneath Equipment
All of our surfaces are tested to BS:EN1177 to ensure your playground is safe. Playgrounds across the country should follow this standard to follow to ensure reasonable safety by absorbing the impact of falls.
With active play equipment, especially tall play towers or climbing walls, providing the right protection in case falls happen is vital. Therefore, underneath playground equipment, you’ll often find rubber-safe grass mats to reduce the risk of injury.
While these safer grass mats are the most common and effective for protection from higher falls, other safety surfacing provides a similar role. Rubber flooring holding natural shock absorbing property enhanced through clever design and manufacture.
2. Slip and Trip proofing
Key to promoting Accessibility and safety, ensuring your surfaces don’t create hazards is vital for any playground. Rubber mulch or rubber chippings for play areas are perfect for slip-proofing your pathways and other areas of play flooring. As a more stable alternative to bark chippings, rubber mulch provides a better grip. This keeps kids safe from slipping when they run around during play or on running tracks during PE lessons.
3. Separate Surfaces for Separate Zones
Underneath canopies, inside playhouses, or just to delineate sports areas, surfacing is a great way to give each playground area a unique look and feel.
You can create a reading area that feels like a fairytale forest with artificial grass that doesn’t get muddy and vibrant rubber toadstool seats for students, or create a professional-looking running track with extra non-slip protection with rubber mulch, or anything else that you might require. By providing a range of surfacing options for you to combine and choose for your playground, you can truly create your dream play area from the ground up!
4. Creative Playground Markings
Playground markings can be used to tell an engaging story that enhances playtime and provides inspiration for curiosity and learning. Whether you choose inbuilt designs in wetpour rubber or thermoplastic markings added onto your existing surface, vibrant, creative, and long-lasting playground markings are a great addition to any playground.
One of the most popular types of playground marking design for primary schools and nurseries is the roadway. Designed to be raced along on foot, with toy cars, or even to practice cycling, these roadways inspire a range of activities that keeps kids active through play.
5. Collaborative Game markings
By installing a number of games and activities into your surfacing design brings a whole new dimension to the play opportunities you can offer. With a range of options from hopscotch, ludo board games, and even chess playground markings, children can play independently, in pairs, or in groups.
These play markings also present the opportunity for educational games. Number caterpillars, 1 to 100 grids, and rainbow design snakes and ladders provide useful tools for early years maths lessons but also create an ideal space for independent learning on the playground as students can explore learning at their own pace.
Upgrade your play flooring with The School Playground Company
From natural surfaces, rubber-bonded surfaces, and impact-absorbing materials, the School Playground Company has you covered. We supply all types of Playground Rubber Surfaces and Artificial Grass for Schools throughout the Midlands including Coventry, Birmingham, Leicester, and Nottingham.
