Halo mouse pads for the desk

Our Halo mouse pads and desk mats take their art from the Master Chief's long war against the Covenant, printed in high resolution across the full surface of a 3 mm neoprene pad. The top is fabric for the mouse to glide on, the base is non-slip so the mat stays where you lay it, and the edges are stitched against fraying. The range covers eight sizes, starting at an 11.8″ × 15.7″ (30 × 40 cm) pad for the mouse hand and ending at a 23.6″ × 47.2″ (60 × 120 cm) mat that runs under everything on the desk; not every design is offered in all eight, so check its product page for the ones it comes in. Nothing is printed until you order it.

Halo: Combat Evolved launched alongside the original Xbox in November 2001, made by Bungie, and came to PC in 2003. The series passed to 343 Industries with Halo 4 in 2012, and that studio has gone by the name Halo Studios since 2024. More than two decades later, a suit of green armor with a gold visor still says "Halo" even to people who have barely played it.

A console classic at a PC desk

Halo grew up on a controller, and on PC it now has two kinds of player. The Master Chief Collection, which gathers Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, ODST, Reach and Halo 4, arrived on PC one game at a time in 2019 and 2020, and Halo Infinite launched on PC and Xbox together in 2021. Some people play all of it with a mouse; others plug a controller into the same computer and play the way they did on the couch.

A desk mat suits both. With a mouse, the fabric top gives your hand one even surface from edge to edge. With a controller, the mat is simply a soft place to set it down between matches, and the non-slip base keeps the keyboard where you left it when you reach past it for a drink.

Shields first, then the head

Halo fights last longer than those in most shooters. Every Spartan carries an energy shield that has to be broken before a headshot will finish them, so a duel is a second or two of keeping your reticle on a player who is strafing, jumping and crouching to throw you off. With a mouse, that is a long, continuous stroke rather than a single snap.

Long strokes need room. If you play at a low sensitivity, an XL, 15.7″ × 35.4″ (40 × 90 cm), keeps the whole movement on the pad, and the XXL, 23.6″ × 35.4″ (60 × 90 cm), adds depth for following a Spartan who jumps over your head. The pad gives you the space; the shots are still up to you.

The Chief and his gold visor

Master Chief's MJOLNIR armor is olive green, scuffed and heavy, and the gold visor is the one bright, reflective thing on it. That visor does the work on a desk mat. In a dim room with warm light, it is the point the eye goes to, even when the keyboard covers his shoulders.

Halo art often shows the Chief from behind or in profile, looking out over a landscape, and that composition suits a long mat well. Let him stand at the far end from your mouse, turned toward the middle, and let the view he's facing, a ring, a battlefield or a sky full of Covenant ships, stretch along the rest of the desk.

Ring worlds across a long desk

The halos themselves are the series' great image. Each one is a ring-shaped world built by the ancient Forerunners, and from its surface the ring climbs out of the horizon on both sides and arcs overhead as a thin, bright band across the sky. Combat Evolved takes place on Installation 04, Halo 2 on Delta Halo and Halo Infinite on Zeta Halo.

That band is made for a wide format. On the XL or the 4XL, 23.6″ × 47.2″ (60 × 120 cm), the ring can rise from one end of the mat, cross the back edge above the keyboard and come down at the other, with grass, cliffs and water below it. It is also the calmest Halo design you can choose: no armor, no weapons, just a landscape that happens to curve into the sky.

Cortana's blue

Cortana, the AI who rides in the Chief's helmet, appears as a hologram of blue and violet light covered in streams of code. Her color is the obvious match for blue lighting. A design built around her suits a dark desk with a blue LED strip behind the monitor, where the glow of the hologram blends into the light on the wall. Because she's drawn as light, she also works on a black background with almost nothing else around her, a simple choice for a minimal setup.

Covenant purple and plasma

The Covenant, the alliance of alien races that fights humanity through the first trilogy, builds everything in smooth curves of purple and blue metal, lit by glowing panels. Its weapons glow too: the plasma pistol in green, the energy sword in pale blue, the needler with its spiky pink crystals. Grunts with methane tanks on their backs, Jackals behind their shields and tall Elites in blue, red or gold armor make up the cast, and the Arbiter, an Elite who changes sides in Halo 2, gives it a hero of its own.

For a desk, the Covenant is the purple option. A design leaning on their ships and plasma suits a setup with violet or pink lighting, and it looks more alien and less military than anything on the human side.

Forerunner silver and the Flood

The Forerunners left their structures everywhere in Halo: huge, angular buildings of silver-gray metal lined with thin channels of blue light, watched over by 343 Guilty Spark, the floating one-eyed Monitor who guides the Chief and then turns on him. Their geometry is clean, cold and symmetrical, and on a desk mat it reads almost like an architectural print. It suits a white or silver desk with cool white light, where a battle scene would feel too busy.

The Flood is the opposite: the parasite that turns everything it touches into lumpy, pale flesh in sickly green and tan. It belongs on a dark desk with green lighting, and on the desk of anyone who still remembers the Library level in Combat Evolved sending wave after wave of it at them.

Warthogs and Pelicans along a strip

Halo's vehicles are long and low, built for the proportions of the M, 11.8″ × 27.6″ (30 × 70 cm), and the L, 11.8″ × 31.5″ (30 × 80 cm). The Warthog, the jeep with a machine gun on the back, is the obvious choice, and a Warthog in mid-jump recalls the escape runs that close Combat Evolved and Halo 3. The Pelican dropship, the Scorpion tank, the Covenant Ghost and the purple Banshee each run the length of a strip under the keyboard just as well.

Weapons for the small pad

A small pad, 11.8″ × 15.7″ (30 × 40 cm), wants a single object rather than a scene. The energy sword, two curved blades of blue light, is the sharpest silhouette in the series. The needler, a stubby gun bristling with pink crystals, is the most cheerful. The M6D magnum from Combat Evolved, remembered for being far stronger than a pistol had any right to be, is an in-joke for anyone who played on the original Xbox. Place the weapon toward the top edge, where your palm doesn't rest.

Red base, blue base

Halo multiplayer has always split teams into red and blue, and several of its classic maps are built in mirror image around that split. Blood Gulch, from Combat Evolved, puts two bases at opposite ends of a canyon; Halo 3's Valhalla does the same across a valley with a stream running through it. Rooster Teeth's Red vs. Blue, the comedy series filmed inside Halo that started in 2003, made Blood Gulch famous even among people who never played there.

That split suits a long desk mat almost too well. A red base at one end, a blue base at the other and the canyon between them gives you a design with two clear focal points and an empty middle where the keyboard can sit.

Halo by era

Each stretch of the series has its own look, which is the simplest way to choose a design.

• The Bungie trilogy: Combat Evolved, Halo 2 and Halo 3, with chunky armor, bright skies and the classic green.
• Halo 3: ODST: the rainy nighttime city of New Mombasa in deep blue and streetlight orange, made for a dark desk.
• Halo: Reach: the doomed planet and Noble Team, in gray steel and burning orange skies.
• Halo 4 and Halo 5: 343's sleeker armor, with more Forerunner blue and silver.
• Halo Infinite: the open spaces of Zeta Halo and armor that looks back to the original.

Halo Wars and the mouse

Not all of Halo is a shooter. Halo Wars, from 2009, and Halo Wars 2, which came to PC and Xbox One in 2017, are real-time strategy games where you command whole armies of Warthogs, Scorpions and Spartans from above. On PC that means the mouse does constant work, dragging boxes around units and clicking orders across the map, while the other hand sits on hotkeys. A long mat keeps both hands on the same surface, and a top-down battlefield design fits a game you only ever see from the sky.

Forge and custom games

Halo 3 introduced Forge in 2007, letting players rearrange maps and invent their own modes, and custom games have been part of the series' identity ever since: Infection, where one team plays the infected, Grifball, born from Red vs. Blue, and endless race tracks and puzzle maps. Halo Infinite's Forge, added in 2022, is a full map editor, and on PC people build in it for hours with a mouse, placing and rotating pieces one at a time. A desk that hosts that kind of work wants a large, flat, cushioned surface under both hands.

Sizes for a Halo desk

Every Halo design carries its own size list on its product page. Here is what each of the main ones suits on a Halo desk.

Setup	Size	Good for
Mouse only	S, 11.8″ × 15.7″ (30 × 40 cm)	An energy sword or the needler
Laptop and controller	TCG Mat, 14″ × 24″ (35.5 × 61 cm)	The Chief's helmet beside a laptop
Compact keyboard	M, 11.8″ × 27.6″ (30 × 70 cm)	A Warthog run under the keys
Low-sensitivity mouse	XL, 15.7″ × 35.4″ (40 × 90 cm)	A ring arcing over the keyboard
Deep desk	XXL, 23.6″ × 35.4″ (60 × 90 cm)	Room to follow a jumping Spartan
Full desk	4XL, 23.6″ × 47.2″ (60 × 120 cm)	Blood Gulch from base to base

For a wide desk without much depth, the L, 11.8″ × 31.5″ (30 × 80 cm), stretches a Warthog or a Pelican a little further, and the 3XL, 19.7″ × 39.4″ (50 × 100 cm), gives a ring panorama extra width without the full depth of the XXL.

Gifts for a Spartan

A Halo pad suits someone who played Combat Evolved at LAN parties with four Xboxes linked together, someone who came in with Reach or Infinite, or someone who can still quote Red vs. Blue. Choose by the era they talk about most; when in doubt, the Chief and his gold visor are the safe pick. If you don't know their desk, an XL, 15.7″ × 35.4″ (40 × 90 cm), is the size least likely to be wrong.

Your pad takes 1–3 business days to print and finish, then ships from Turkey; a US address usually sees it 2–5 business days after that.

Caring for olive and gold

Olive and gray Halo designs hide everyday wear, but crumbs and pet hair show up on dark Covenant scenes. Brush them off or wipe the surface with a damp cloth when it needs it. When it needs more, fill a basin with lukewarm water and a few drops of mild soap, wash the pad by hand, rinse it, roll it in a towel to press the water out and lay it flat until it's dry. Machine washing, tumble drying and ironing are all out; looked after by hand, the fade-resistant print keeps the visor gold.

A note on names

Halo, Master Chief, Cortana and the names of the games, characters, places and vehicles are used here only to describe what our designs are inspired by. Padrift is not affiliated with, sponsored or endorsed by Microsoft, Xbox Game Studios, Halo Studios or Bungie.