The Best Yoga Mat Cleaners

The short answer

Buy Manduka Yoga Mat Wash and Refresh. Of the four cleaners here it is the only one whose maker states it cleans all mat materials, and that single line is worth more than any difference in scent or bottle size. Most households end up with more than one mat — a thick one at home, a thin one in a bag — and one bottle that is safe on both is the end of the problem.

If you own exactly one mat and you know what it is made of, there is a better-matched pick: JadeYoga's plant-based wash is written for natural rubber, and Gaiam's is written for PVC and foam. If you have no cloth to wipe with, the ASUTRA set includes one. All four are listed in full below.

Match the cleaner to the mat

Yoga mat cleaner is not a category where the premium option is better at everything. It is a compatibility problem, and the mat makers are unusually clear about it.

Natural rubber, including open-cell rubber. The most easily damaged surface here. It absorbs what you put on it, so alcohol and harsh cleaners dry it out and oils stay in the mat and make it slick. JadeYoga sells its wash specifically for rubber mats; Manduka's guidance for its own open-cell line is that a disinfectant should never be used on it, because the liquid soaks in and cannot be rinsed out. Spray lightly, wipe with a damp cloth, hang it to dry.

Closed-cell PVC and TPE. The easy case. Nothing penetrates the surface, so a light spray and a wipe after each practice is enough, with a heavier scrub weekly. Gaiam rates its wash for PVC, NBR and vinyl, and Manduka's routine for its PVC mats is spray and wipe dry after use.

Cork and dry-grip polyurethane. Check before you spray. Gaiam states its wash is not compatible with natural rubber and should not be used on cork or dry-grip mats, which is exactly the kind of detail that is printed once and then ignored. The cork roundup covers how those surfaces behave, and the materials guide will tell you which family your mat belongs to if the label has worn off.

The through-line: open-cell surfaces absorb, closed-cell surfaces do not, and that one fact decides how much liquid is safe. Open cell versus closed cell is the background, and it is the first thing to establish before buying anything in this list.

The four, side by side

Every figure above is the maker's own published description. Note that three of the four ship without a cloth: a lint-free microfiber one is part of the job, and a paper towel shreds on a textured mat.

What about water and dish soap?

For a closed-cell PVC or TPE mat, a bottle of water with a drop of mild soap genuinely does most of what a branded spray does, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. It is what most people used before mat wash existed.

The catch is everything that is not a plain PVC mat. Manduka's own cleaning guidance tells you not to use soap on its mats, because it compromises the surface over time, and not to apply essential oils directly, because they leave the mat slippery. It also rules out disinfecting wipes of the Lysol and Clorox sort, bleach, and anything involving a washing machine or submerging the mat. On a natural-rubber mat, a soaking is the one thing most likely to shorten its life.

So the honest version: homemade is fine on a cheap closed-cell mat, and a formulated wash is cheap insurance on a mat that cost real money. How to clean a yoga mat has the full routine either way, including the deep clean and the drying step people skip.

One more thing not to do: do not treat a slippery mat as a dirty mat. If a new mat is slick, it needs breaking in rather than cleaning, and spraying it every day will not change that.

How often a mat needs it

Manduka's guidance for its own mats is a wipe after every practice and a proper clean at least weekly, with attention to the spots your hands and feet actually touch. That is a reasonable rule for any mat, adjusted for how much you sweat: a heated practice means every session, a gentle morning practice means weekly.

The part that matters more than frequency is drying. A mat that is rolled while damp is a mat that will smell eventually, whatever you cleaned it with, and the smell lives in the mat rather than on it. Why does my yoga mat smell covers the recovery, and a mat towel is the way to keep most of the sweat out of the mat in the first place.

Cleaning also buys you time. A mat that is wiped down and dried stays grippy longer than one that is not, which pushes out the replacement date — how long a mat lasts sets out what wear actually looks like when it arrives.