Yoga Mats Guide

Do I Need a Yoga Towel?

A skidless towel is the cheapest grip upgrade in yoga and the most over-bought accessory in it. Which one you are depends almost entirely on how much you sweat.

By Janet H.Updated October 10, 2026How we pick

A towel and water bottle resting on an exercise mat

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The short answer

You need a yoga towel if your hands slide on your own mat when you sweat. A skidless towel is the cheapest and most effective fix for that specific problem, because it grips wet skin better than almost any mat surface and it goes in the washing machine afterwards.

You do not need one if you practice in a cool room and your mat already holds. A towel on a grippy dry mat adds a layer that moves, and nothing else.

Four cases where you want one

Hot yoga or any heated class. Not optional in practice. This is the environment skidless towels were invented for, and it is why the hot yoga roundup treats one as part of the kit rather than an extra.
You have a slippery mat you do not want to replace. A towel over a smooth PVC mat costs a fraction of a grippy mat and solves most of the same problem. If the mat is new and premium, check it is not just unbroken-in first.
You use studio or gym mats. A towel is a hygiene barrier between you and a mat forty other people used this week. This is the one case that has nothing to do with grip.
You sweat heavily regardless of room temperature. Some people do, and the fix is the same whether the class is heated or not — the sweaty hands picks cover the mat-side options too.

Three cases where you do not

A cool room and a mat that grips. If nothing slides, a towel is a solution to a problem you do not have, and it will wrinkle.
A practice built on rolling and lateral work. Mat pilates and conditioning move your torso across the mat with your hands in the air, so the towel is not held down and it folds into ridges. That is why hot pilates wants grip in the mat itself.
Restorative and gentle practices. Little sweat, few weight-bearing hand positions, no problem to solve. A blanket is a better purchase.

Towel, rug or hand towel

Three different objects get called a yoga towel, and they do not interchange.

	Skidless mat towel	Cotton yoga rug	Ordinary hand towel
Size	Mat-length, 24 to 26 in wide	Mat-length, traditional weave	Small
How it stays put	Silicone nubs on the underside	Weight and weave; grips when damp	It does not
Grip when soaked	Excellent	Good, improves slightly when damp	Poor
Machine washable	Yes	Yes	Yes
Best for	Hot yoga, slippery mats, shared mats	Ashtanga, dry practice, used over a mat	Wiping hands and face
Not for	Rolling-heavy floor work	Heavy sweat on its own	Grip, at all

If you only buy one thing, buy the skidless mat towel; it covers the most cases. The cotton rug is a different tradition with real advantages — breathable, washable, pleasant to practice on — and the mat versus rug comparison explains where it fits. A small hand towel is still worth having in a hot class for your face, and it does nothing for grip.

Within skidless towels there is one more choice worth understanding, and it is the material. Almost all of them are microfiber, which absorbs several times its own weight in water and dries quickly. The variable is the backing: a full grid of silicone nubs holds best and adds a faint texture you can feel through your palms, while a lighter scattering of nubs feels more like cloth and migrates more. If you practice hot, take the full grid. If you want a towel mainly as a hygiene layer on a studio mat, the lighter version is more pleasant underfoot and perfectly adequate.

Cotton is the other option, and it behaves differently rather than worse. A cotton rug has no silicone at all and grips through weight, weave and a little dampness, which means it is excellent on a dry mat and unremarkable once you are genuinely sweating. It also lasts far longer than microfiber, washes to death without complaint, and does not develop the faint permanent smell that a heavily used microfiber towel eventually does.

How many should you own? Two, if you practice in a heated room more than once a week, for the dull reason that a damp towel takes a day to dry properly and a towel that goes into a bag wet is the fastest route to a smell problem. One is plenty for everyone else.

The picks

The towel, the rug, or the mat that needs neither

The skidless towel first because it is cheapest, the cotton rug for a dry practice, and the grippy mat if you would rather solve it once.

Rescuing a slippery mat
Manduka Yogitoes Skidless Mat Towel
The fix for a slippery mat you otherwise like. Silicone nubs hold it to the mat, and the top grips harder the wetter it gets.
$72.00Amazon
#ad · Price as of November 3, 2026 · Affiliate disclosure for the link to Manduka Yogitoes Skidless Mat Towel
A washable traditional rug
JadeYoga Organic Cotton Mysore Yoga Rug
A handwoven cotton rug that grips harder the wetter it gets, and the only one of the two here that Jade lists as machine washable. It is a surface, not a cushion — nothing about it pads a knee.
$99.95Amazon
#ad · Price as of November 3, 2026 · Affiliate disclosure for the link to JadeYoga Organic Cotton Mysore Yoga Rug
Grip when your hands are wet
Liforme Original Yoga Mat
The one mat that stays grippy when your hands are actually wet, with alignment markings that genuinely help a beginner square up. It is the priciest thing on this site.
$165.00Amazon
#ad · Price as of November 3, 2026 · Affiliate disclosure for the link to Liforme Original Yoga Mat

Using one without fighting it

Dampen it before class. Counter-intuitive and correct: a lightly damp skidless towel grips immediately, while a bone-dry one slides until you sweat into it.
Match the length to your mat. A towel shorter than your mat crawls. A towel longer than your mat folds at the ends.
Nubs down. Obvious, and worth saying, because the silicone side is what stops the towel moving.
Wash it without fabric softener. Softener coats the fibers and kills the absorbency that makes the towel work. Wash warm, skip the softener, air dry.
Do not use it as a reason to skip cleaning the mat. Sweat still gets through, and a mat that never gets wiped still ends up smelling.

One honest caveat on the economics. A towel is much cheaper than a mat, but if you are buying a towel so that a mat you dislike becomes tolerable, and you practice four times a week, buying the grippy mat once is the better call. The comparison that frames that decision is Jade Harmony versus Manduka eKO.

If the fix you need is a surface rather than a new mat, the yoga towel roundup compares the three worth owning and what holds each one to the mat.

How we picked

Chosen on published criteria, and we say so

Most gear sites open by telling you how many hours they spent with the products. We have not used most of these, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise. Every pick here is chosen against criteria we publish — grip, cushioning, size options, what buyers report after a year of use, and whether the thing is still actually sold — and every manufacturer figure on the page is labeled as the maker's claim.

Nobody pays for a place on this page, no product was supplied free in exchange for coverage, and a specification the maker does not publish is never guessed at. See the full criteria and weighting.

FAQ

Questions people ask

Do I need a yoga towel for hot yoga?

In practice, yes. Almost no mat holds a wet palm reliably at hot-yoga sweat levels, and a skidless towel is the cheapest fix.

Can I use a regular towel instead of a yoga towel?

For wiping your face, yes. For grip, no — an ordinary towel has no non-slip backing and will slide across the mat as soon as you move.

Should a yoga towel be wet or dry?

Lightly damp. Skidless towels grip best with some moisture in them, which is why they feel better ten minutes into a class than at the start.

Can you use a yoga towel without a mat?

Only on carpet, and only for gentle work. On a hard floor there is no cushioning and the towel will slide.

Update log

What changed

October 10, 2026First published.

Receipts

Sources

We have not used every product on this page, and we do not pretend otherwise. Thicknesses, materials, sizes and warranty terms are the manufacturer's published figures, shown as their claims. Anything about materials, skin or injury is linked to a source. Prices are set by Amazon and change constantly, so we never type one into the text — every figure comes from Amazon's own data, dated, and disappears rather than going stale. Read the full method.