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WeatherTech FloorLiner Crash Course

WeatherTech liners have special “channels” that carry fluids and debris away from your shoes.

Provide coverage for your vehicle’s footwell and feature retention devices to keep the liner in place.

We had good luck with our WeatherTech liners, but customer reviews are mixed. Some buyers experienced haphazard packaging, poor customer service, and the mats not fitting correctly.

WeatherTech FloorLiner Review: Our Honest Take

In the summer of 2015, we received a set of FloorLiner mats from WeatherTech. We placed them in our “company car” at the time, a 2014 Ford Focus. The WeatherTech FloorLiner mats were in that vehicle until the summer of 2022.

Wear & Tear

Since we rarely had passengers in the backseat, the rear liner was still in pretty good shape. The front liners, however, had started to wear as early as 2017 and were definitely showing their age by 2022, a full seven years later. Most of the wear we started to see in 2017 was from my wife’s high heels or boots with heels. Over time, a hole developed in the liner under the accelerator.

Good, But Maybe Not Great

WeatherTech FloorLiners will suffice if you want something better than a standard mat, but we encourage you to look at other customer reviews as well. While we had good luck overall with our WeatherTech FloorLiners, we would look at other options if we wanted to purchase a new set of heavy-duty mats with our own money.

Poor Customer Reviews

What troubles us is the slew of negative customer reviews on WeatherTech as a whole on Trustpilot and through the Better Business Bureau.

By contrast, Amazon reviews of the FloorLiners themselves are mostly positive, but we still have reservations. If you purchase a set of WeatherTech FloorLiners, our hope is that you will be pleased with them, although our concern is that you also run the risk of having a bad experience.   

To help you make the best decision, read on to learn more about WeatherTech FloorLiners. We cover how the mats are designed, look at some key features, and go over installation and cleaning.

WeatherTech FloorLiner: Key Design Features

Founded in 1989, WeatherTech can accommodate nearly any vehicle interior, designing their mats with Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM) software.

As described by WeatherTech, all mats are laser-measured to protect the front, back, and sides of your vehicle’s footwell while remaining flexible under extreme temperatures. The liners for our Focus were measured correctly, covering the vital areas of the car inside that would be the most susceptible to dirt, mud, snow, and grime.

WeatherTech liners have “channels” that carry fluids and debris to a lower reservoir to keep everything away from your shoes. Aside from the occasional spill, the most common fluid will be water from melting snow. This is one advantage WeatherTech has over a standard rubber floor mat. Although nicer than the average cloth mat, water can still pool on a traditional rubber mat. During the winter, that pool of water will also likely include salt and dirt, which usually soaks into your shoes and pants while driving.

The WeatherTech design is meant to prevent this, and for the most part, it does the job. In our experience, wearing tennis shoes means your jeans will still get wet during the winter, even with the fluid channels, although it’s less than what would happen with a traditional rubber mat. If you are wearing sturdy work boots like Red Wings, Carhartt, or Wolverine, the extra heft of the sole, along with the fluid channels, should keep your pants dry.

The WeatherTech FloorLiners in our 2014 Ford Focus.

Installation & Fitment

The installation process is straightforward and only takes a few minutes. Retention grommets and hooks to secure the liners to your vehicle’s floor are included (make sure the liners are not accidentally resting on top of the accelerator or brake pedal). The rear liner is either one or two pieces, depending on the vehicle (for our Focus, it was one long piece).

WeatherTech FloorLiners are designed primarily for vehicles with carpet flooring as opposed to vinyl unless otherwise noted. If you have existing carpet floor mats, get rid of those first and then install the WeatherTech FloorLiners. The liners should be installed directly on the floor of your vehicle and not over top of your old carpet mats.

Although installation is relatively simple, some customer reviews call attention to issues with fitment, while others state concern over how the liners do not stay in place, even with the retention grommets. We had no problems with either fitment or the mats staying in place inside our 2014 Ford Focus, but these customer reviews are something to keep in mind if you are considering a set of WeatherTech liners.

Cleaning & Maintenance

Since the fluid channels catch everything, WeatherTech mats are easy to clean. Just pull them out and dump them. If you want to give your floor liners some shine, WeatherTech sells a biodegradable kit with a bottle of cleaner and a bottle of protectant. This will also keep the WeatherTech liners smelling nice, which is challenging with a standard cloth mat.  

During the summer, we spend time camping and hiking at Warren Dunes State Park on the shore of Lake Michigan. We always inherit plenty of sand and food crumbs on these trips. The channels inside the WeatherTech mats catch everything, making them easy to dump out or vacuum.

Are WeatherTech FloorLiners Worth It?

We got seven good years of use out of our WeatherTech FloorLiners and can honestly say we were happy with them overall. However, given the number of mixed and negative customer reviews, we would rethink our decision to stay with WeatherTech if we needed to purchase another set of floor mats.

If you are sold on WeatherTech FloorLiners, the red “Get Best Price” button above will take you to their Amazon store, where you can order the exact liners for your vehicle. If not, take a look at other popular brands like Husky Liners, which are usually less expensive than WeatherTech.

Carl Anthony is the Managing Editor of Automoblog and the host of AutoVision News Radio and AutoSens Insights. As a respected automotive industry thought leader, Carl has appeared on numerous podcasts and radio shows, including Wrench Nation, Cars Yeah, The Car Doctor, and Brains Byte Back, in addition to appearing as a regular contributor on MotorMouth Radio on WHPC 90.3 FM. His work can also be seen and heard 24/7 on the Automoblog YouTube channel.

Original article: WeatherTech FloorLiner Review: Should You Buy These More Expensive Mats?