By Harvin C. Moore
Outdoor garden furniture is a wonderful luxury that turns your patio, deck, porch, or garden into an outdoor room that you can enjoy much of the year. Relaxing on a comfortable and stylish weather-resistant chair, bench, rocker, or porch swing with a good friend or a great book is truly one of life’s great pleasures.
But like most things in life, quality matters. We all want to own things that are beautifully made, well built, and, in the case of garden furniture, truly weatherproof. Most discerning people are happy to make a major expenditure as long as they can be confident their expenditure will be with them always. And since we all know that great furniture can, in fact, stand the test of time, all a discerning person asks is that his furniture be of high quality. After all, teak benches placed in London’s parks and royal gardens more than a century ago are still there – quality outdoor furniture stands the test of time.
All too often, we find deals on outdoor furniture that seem “too good to be true” – a “teak” garden bench for $99, a steamer chair for $149, or an eight piece outdoor dining set for $599 at your local superstore. Sometimes these deals seem legitimate – the furniture looks good, and sometimes it even seems strong and durable – but how is a layman to know for sure?
The unfortunate but unsurprising fact is that you get what you pay for. We sometimes hate to hear that, but there is a reason that premium weatherproof garden furniture is expensive. Of course, that doesn’t mean you should just buy the most expensive thing you can find – and in this article we will discuss the differences between good and bad garden furniture, and how to tell the difference.
The sad fact is that low quality outdoor furniture will be rotten or broken in 2-3 years unless it is made of high quality, durable, weatherproof materials – and those superstore chairs usually aren’t. The furniture usually sold at superstores as “outdoor” wooden furniture is usually made of a non-weatherproof wood which has been painted. This presents two problems:
First, these woods are nowhere near as strong and durable as Brazilian Cherry. Brazilian Cherry is one of the world’s hardest and most stable woods and is several times stronger than oak, ash, hickory, and even teak (Brazilian Cherry is 250% harder than teak). You can literally pick up a chair in a superstore and know the difference – those chairs normally weigh between 20 and 25 pounds, while our rockers weigh 37 pounds and up.
Second, paint does not last, and so the wood underneath will soon become exposed to the elements due to the aging of the paint and its shielding properties, and due to scratches, gaps in the paint at the joints due to expansion and contraction of the wood. The bottom line is that no furniture is weatherproof unless the material used to make it is weatherproof.
America has been flooded in recent years with Far Eastern imitation “teak” that is not weatherproof. You can spot this “teak” at garden stores because it usually looks pretty dreadful right there in the store’s outdoor display area – you can see that it has been coated with a “protectant” and that the protectant soon peels and flakes off in little pieces. When the “teak” underneath is exposed to the elements, it blackens and rots. Furniture like this is good outdoors for only 2-3 seasons, and it starts looking bad within months. Be especially wary when outdoor furniture is displayed indoors in a store. The only way to know what you’re buying is to see it outdoors in the elements.
But even high quality teak is not as hard as Brazilian Cherry, and cannot be painted, whereas Brazilian Cherry can be painted. For this reason, Brazilian Cherry is currently the best option worldwide for painted outdoor furniture. Do not make the mistake of buying a non-weatherproof wood merely because it has a “weatherproof paint”, because in the long run, there is no such thing. For more on how Brazilian Cherry compares to teak, see About Brazilian Cherry.
Buying quality outdoor furniture can be one of the best decisions you’ll ever make if you can be confident that your purchase will always be with you, and you will have created a beautiful and relaxing outdoor space you will always enjoy.
Harvin C. Moore
Founder and President
Decor Americana, Inc.
DecorAmericana.com
