Garden Furniture

[MrsMontyD]

Can you please share your thoughts and experience of garden furniture before I make an expensive mistake.

I want to buy a table and seating, casual not dining, for up to 8 people with a canopy of some sort. I've looked at a few garden centres and there's a variety of materials they come in from wood to plastic and woven rattan types.

We don't have space to bring it inside in winter (except cushions) so it needs to be able to stay outside.

Sofa style or individual chairs?
What sort keeps looking nice for longest?
Do we need covers? I'd like to be able to use it on nicer days in the autumn/winter.

We love our outdoor sofa seating, so comfy.

If you get the sofa type with cushions look carefully at how it looks without cushions, since that’s what you’ll be seeing a lot of the time. Some styles look fine without cushions some look awful.

Plastic is probably the lowest maintenance and can be left uncovered. Hardwood will last ok left uncovered but will go a bit green and need jetwashing/scrubbing every spring. Metal (even painted) will need covering or it will rust where the joins are. However plastic looks least nice IMO so there’s a trade off.

Ours has a metal frame and sort of mock wood slats (polywood). We do cover it to stop the metal rusting, but only in winter not every time it rains.

Just thought about any garden chair/sofa. Sit on it and see that the seat comfortably supports your thighs. Close to the knees is best. Now you're there. how are your getting up and out. I tried what looked like a lovely char in Aldi, and it was a bugger to get out of, too much inclined, and no arm rests.

We’ve got wood as we live in north west, it rains all the time and I don’t want it covered all winter as the garden is very visible. Also, if we get a nice day in winter it’s good to be able to sit out.

.I’ve never pressure washed it. It’s teak and we haven’t treated it, just let it go grey and weathered. We get the cushions out for visitors who might stay a while.

it’s wearing less well now we’ve moved house as it gets no sun for 3 months of the year. Whereas in old house there was alaways a bit of light in garden even in depth of winter.

Friend has one of those big plastic rattan corner sofa sets. Fabulous on a lovely day so comfortable. But….the cushions take up most of her summerhouse for storage, by the time she’s got them out your tea has gone cold/ice has melted in the gin….it starts to rain and you have to put them all back in summerhouse.

and if you just want to sit in the garden with a quick beer/cuppa it’s not comfortable without the cushions…

Sofas are lovely we have have a big L shaped one but don’t underestimate the amount of room storing the cushions takes as you effectively have twice the number of cushions as if you went for chairs. Also thickness of cushions should be a factor, thin ones are easier to store but not as comfy whereas thick comfy cushions can easily take up twice the space.

we have plastic rattan it’s under a cover along with the cushions during the summer months just protects from tree debris, bird poop and rain. We move ours indoors because we have the space otherwise would leave it out.

We bit the bullet last year as our garden furniture needed replacing after 20+ years. We went for all weather furniture & just leave everything including cushions out. But it’s expensive

www.lifeoutdoorliving.com/

Thanks everyone, height is also an issue for us, DP struggles with low sofas.

The rattan sets, imo, stay looking good for longer with no effort needed (just pressure wash them each spring to get the grime off. The problem is having the storage space for all the cushions!

Wood/metal seems to look tired after a while and needs good upkeep.

If your budget stretches, then it’s well worth looking at companies such as Maze Living - anything in their outdoor fabric range. Can be left out all year round - they look like proper fabric sofas/chairs etc. No need to panic when it starts raining!

I have mazeliving sun lounger and sofa set and I love it, who cares if water gets on it in a quick rain shower, the covers that come with it go on easily and everything stays under it so no need for shed space for cushions.

Make sure u look for outdoor fabric items on mazeliving site

If you’ve got an outdoor fabric product, you don’t need to put a cover on it - that’s the beauty of it.

Outdoor cover is for winter protection.

We have a lovely six seater dining set in rattan ,we bought a storage box in rattan for the seat covers and as its matching colour it looks awesome 👌

We also have a beautiful 8 seater rattan corner sofa with a gas firepit table which we cover with a fitted waterproof cover ,which the people at the showroom reccomended from amazon .the cover was only £50 and its been fantastic

I loathe the plastic rattan with a passion.

I'd buy reclaimed teak and let it weather to a nice grey, you won't need to do anything else to it.

Our painted wrought iron table & chairs (bought on eBay originally) are also still looking good after 17 years in the garden!

DSis has rattan ; comfortable and weatherproof but a bit of an eyesore when cushions aren't on it
They are well off for storage space but is much more of a kerfuffle than our light thin cushions to go on wooden furniture being dragged in and out. It needs washing down in the spring as does our wooden furniture so I don't see much difference in maintenance.

We love our plastic rattan furniture...it's one of the best (new) things we've ever bought.

Despite the slightly prohibitive price tag, we invested in Gloster for our dining set - think it was roughly £2600 for a table plus four chairs with cushions 8 years ago - and we opted for a traditional style which suits our old house.

It doesn't look remotely like plastic imho and is such good quality. We don't bother covering it in winter (just pack the showerproof cushions away) and it looks as good as new.

There was no parasol included. The Norfolk Leisure one in my attached pics was new last year.

For our covered area we wanted a garden sofa that was a bit more contemporary, but again we chose faux rattan. We only bought this (from FeatureDeco) at the end of last summer but so far it's wearing well and we didn't bother using the cover that came with it over winter.

I do love weathered teak too and we have a lovely old teak Lutyens bench, but it does go very green in our wet Welsh climate.

Metal furniture we've had previously - despite being £££ - hasn't stood up as well as the Gloster imho.

Make sure any metal is aluminium not steel. Even if it’s under rattan etc. Steel rusts even if it’s painted, aluminum doesn’t. Also lighter to move etc

Pics failed to attach and now won't load more than one at a time.

Close-up

FeatureDeco corner sofa

Buy aluminium furniture. It doesn't need painting or treating. It won't rot or rust. It is light but robust. We have been very happy with ours.

How to tell me you’re advertising without telling me that you’re advertising 🤣🤣