Best Materials for Playgrounds

Playgrounds are designed to be both safe and fun for children to play on, and a significant factor into how safe a playground is depends on the ground upon which you build it. While you need to make sure that you have a stable foundation to build the playground upon to make it sturdy, you can’t have kids playing above hard concrete or asphalt, especially when they will be higher up. For this reason, it’s important to use a cover material to help create a safe environment for play. Here are some of the best materials for playgrounds...

Rubber Mulch

Rubber mulch is one of the best modern options for playground cover materials. It is incredibly soft, and is able to absorb most of the impact when a kid falls down. In addition to being one of the safest options, rubber mulch is very low-maintenance, because weeds don’t grow within rubber mulch. The only issue with rubber mulch is that you need to buy fairly high quality options, because low-quality rubber mulch can get dirty and fall apart, very quickly.

Pea Gravel

Pea gravel is becoming more and more popular for playground because of its exceptionally low cost, and its ability to create a more natural aesthetic than rubber mulch. Pea gravel is also incredibly popular for dog parks. The only issue with pea gravel is that it isn’t the softest material that you can use, which means that kids are more liable to get cut, scraped, and bruised when they fall on it.

Rubber Scraps

Another rubber option for playground cover materials is to use recycled rubber from tires and other sources. These cover materials create a solid rubber surface that are divided and installed into tiles. The soft and strong properties of rubber make it incredibly safe, but also highly durable. The main problem with this method is that, despite being recycled, rubber tiles are pretty expensive, at least compared with other options.