How to Make a Padded Room - DIY Wall Padding and Floors

When you want to create a safety room for a child’s timeout area, make use of padded room mats on the walls and floor. These pads are a smart idea when creating a seclusion room that’s quiet and calming for children.

Teachers can use this type of room at school for students who need time alone to wind down, or parents can create a room with padding at home to help the kids calm down. A padded room also is useful in a hospital, health care facility, daycare, retirement center, or correctional facility.

Other times, using padded room mats can be useful for creating a backdrop for a photo shoot, a martial arts or wrestling practice room, or a Halloween haunted house prop room.

However, the most common reason for using these cushioned mats on the walls and floor is to create a safe isolation room to prevent the child from doing physical harm to himself or herself.

Selecting Wall Padding

If you’re interested in creating a secure space for kids who need a calming area, it’s important to install the padded room mats properly. You don’t want the pads to pop loose if the child becomes violent. They need to stay in place to protect the child from crashing into unforgiving walls.

Gym Wall Padding from Greatmats is a perfect padded room solution. These pads are available in a variety of sizes and colors, so you can match the pad to the available space. These pads are made for hanging on all kinds of wall surfaces, including concrete block, brick, or drywall.

Additionally, the pads offer the ability for custom cutouts for light switches or wall outlets. You can later add covers to these cutouts to keep the kids safe while they’re in the calming room.

An economical option for padded room wall mats is the Gym Mats 4x8 Ft product. These mats aren’t made specifically for hanging on the wall, but they can be mounted by using washers and driving screws hook and loop connector flaps to the wall. This allows you to easily remove the pads when the room needs to serve other purposes.

Installing Wall Padding With a Lip

For mats that have a vinyl mounting lip section at the top and bottom, you can mount them to the wall directly. Start by mounting furring strips to the wall where the lips of the pads will be mounted. You’ll need furring strips at the top portion of the pad and at the bottom. A third furring strip in the middle will help keep the mats straight and prevent warping

Secure the furring strips to the wall using screws that are appropriate for the wall material. With drywall, screw into the wall studs. Then place screws through the holes in the lips in the vinyl and attach the pads to the furring strips.

You will want to include a washer with each screw to ensure a secure fit, reducing the chances of the mats pulling loose under pressure.

Installing Wall Padding With a Z-clip

For a temporary installation of padded room mats, look to the Gym Wall Padding products with z-clips. These pads are easy to install and remove.

Some of these wall pads attach to the wall using a z-clip system at the top and bottom of the mat. Hang one section of the z-clips on the wall, based on the height of the mat and how far off the ground you want the mat installed.

Then attach the other half of the z-clips onto the plywood backing on the mat. You must use precise measurements to be certain the two halves of the z-clips will line up properly.

Slide the z-clip sections together to secure the pads to the wall.

Installing Padded Floors

Selecting padded room mats for the floor is an easy process too. You have a few options, including the Gym Mats product we mentioned earlier.

But for a sturdy floor pad installation that’s easy to adjust to fit the size of the room, Martial Arts Mats are a nice choice. These mats measure about 0.75 inches in thickness. We also offer a 1.5-Inch Martial Arts Mat product for those who need more thickness in the floor padding and a 4 foot critical fall height rating. As flooring products designed for martial arts, the are able to withstand high impact environments while protecting the body.

Both of these floor mats have a puzzle style edge, allowing you to simply pop the mats together to install the floor.

When you reach a wall, you can cut the mats with a sharp utility knife, creating an edge that will fit tightly against the wall. These mats also ship with border pieces that fit into the puzzle edge and create a flat side. (We recommend leaving a roughly 1/2-inch gap along the walls to allow for expansion during fluctuations in heat and humidity.)

Rely on Greatmats to have all of the padded room mats you need to complete your design of a safe isolation room. Our customer service team is ready to help you calculate the amount of padding you need and figure out exactly which products will best match your situation.