Your outdoor patio is just as good a space to spend time as the season allows. As summer fades and gives way to the winter, you’ll have to bid the glories of the outdoors goodbye for a time and cage yourself indoors until the arctic weather fades for the next season.
Unfortunately, bringing patio furniture indoors every winter, while not impossible, can be difficult and time-consuming.
To save time and worry less about the condition of an outdoor patio setup, most people opt for patio furniture that can be left outside in the winter. That way, they won’t have to worry about bringing the heavy sofas, tables, and stools when the cold season kicks in.
So if you live in an area that snows year after year, and you’re considering setting up your patio without worrying about the cold weather, consider investing in furniture pieces that you can leave out in the open even when it snows heavily.
Contents
- Best Outdoor Furniture for Winter Season
- Patio Furniture that Can Be Left Outside in the Winter
- 1. Stone Furniture
- 2. Treated Wood Furniture
- 3. Rattan Furniture
- 4. Aluminum Furniture Pieces
- 5. Plastic Furniture
- FAQ’s on Outdoor Furniture for Winter Season
- Can you leave wicker furniture outside in winter?
- Do I need to cover my patio furniture in winter?
- Can you leave patio cushions outside in winter?
- Author
Best Outdoor Furniture for Winter Season
The patio furniture that you can leave outside in the winter is any type that’s weather resistant. For example, any furniture piece made of aluminum is water, rust, and corrosion resistant, and can therefore stay outside all year round.
In this guide, we’ll look at the types of furniture pieces that you can leave out in the winter.
Patio Furniture that Can Be Left Outside in the Winter
There are at least 5 types of furniture pieces that you can leave outside in the winter season. These are:
- Stone furniture
- Treated wood furniture
- Synthetic rattan furniture
- Aluminum furniture pieces and
- Plastic furniture
Let’s look at each of these further and even highlight some examples that are worth consideration.
1. Stone Furniture
The one thing that’s for sure about natural stones is that they don’t easily degrade. In fact, they can stand up to years of harsh weather conditions and keep their structure intact.
To be clear, there are different types of stones. Some can stand up to the harshest weather conditions imaginable, but some can degrade just as fast because of weather changes. However, the damages caused by natural cracks in rocks are never instantaneous.
In rare cases do you ever have to schedule maintenance for stone furniture pieces. Therefore they can be a good option for someone who needs a set and forget type of furniture piece.
You won’t find natural stone furniture pieces readily available for sale online at stores. However, you can find skilled artists near you who can curve the pieces to your liking. Some suppliers even have the pieces already available for sale, so all you have to do is to choose your designs and close the sales.
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2. Treated Wood Furniture
Treated wood furniture pieces are some of my favorite. For me, they’re the type that can add an exotic touchup to any patio. And if you mix your pieces right, you could create an outside décor that’s as appealing as the inner one.
Apparently, the furniture pieces in our deck are currently two and a half years older, but they still look as good as new. And given that they’re weather-resistant, they’ve always stood up even to the extremely cold conditions we’ve ever experienced.
I should mention that the type of wood is an important consideration to make when determining the type of furniture piece that you can leave out in the winter. For what it’s worth, we strongly recommend that you choose furniture pieces made from hardwood such as teak, mahogany, oak, acacia, or elm. These tend to last longer than pieces made of spruce and pinewoods.
Teak is particularly a decent material, especially when it comes to the winter season. It’s the only type of hardwood with natural oil content that repels water and therefore hardly warps or cracks.
And provided you treat it every year, you can be sure that it won’t rot but instead stand up to the cold weather, winter after winter.
Also read: Energy efficient patio doors
3. Rattan Furniture
Rattan furniture pieces don’t come close to anything I’d like to see on my patio. But some of my friends have these in their outdoor spaces and I think they look great.
If you’re going to go with this option, consider buying furniture pieces made of synthetic rattan, not natural rattan. While natural rattan looks great, it’s by no means suitable for the outdoors, not to mention that it requires a lot more maintenance.
Synthetic rattan furniture pieces are different in the sense that their mix of resin and plastic makes them durable, waterproof, and UV resistant.
The waterproof aspect is our major concern here. After all, it snows a lot in the winter. So if you’re going to buy furniture pieces that you can leave outside, they had better be made of synthetic rattan to keep ice and snow from soaking up and destroying the pieces.
See also: Mixing wicker and wood furniture for patio
4. Aluminum Furniture Pieces
Metals and precipitation have never been the best mix, but people that have outdoor patios unanimously agree that aluminum furniture pieces are the best bet because you can leave them outdoors all year round, and for good reasons.
To begin with, Aluminum is a lightweight yet sturdy material that doesn’t easily bend under pressure. That means it can hold a user’s weight quite well, provided their capacity doesn’t exceed the suggested weight limit.
Second, aluminum naturally reacts with oxygen to form an oxide coat, which shields the material by making it corrosion and rust-resistant. Thanks to this coating, furniture pieces made of aluminum can stay outdoors even in the dead of the winter and never corrode.
While it’s beyond the scope of this guide, aluminum is also UV resistant and therefore doubles as the material to consider if you’re in search of deck furniture pieces that you can also leave in the full sun.
From my experience, aluminum furniture pieces require the least maintenance. And given that there’s no one way to clean the piece, any DIY cleaning method should definitely suffice. For example, you can clean the surface with warm water and normal laundry detergent and you’re good to go.
The issue I have with some aluminum furniture pieces is they tend to be so lightweight that wind can easily blow them away. So if you live in a place subject to constant wind, you might want to consider the best furniture for windy deck invest in solutions that can keep your patio furniture from blowing away.
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5. Plastic Furniture
I don’t know about you, but I find plastic furniture to be among the most inexpensive yet durable pieces that you can leave outside even in winter. I have had some plastic furniture out in the rain for months and even their colors have never faded over that period.
But how do they hold up in the winter?
Well, they are not that bad, but if you live in a place where temperatures can go further down to the extremely low point, it just might be good to go for another type of material.
That’s because the extremely low temperatures can make the plastic brittle and therefore easy to break.
Also read: Keeping patio warm in winter
FAQ’s on Outdoor Furniture for Winter Season
Can you leave wicker furniture outside in winter?
You shouldn’t leave furniture pieces made of natural rattan outside in the winter months because they can damage easily. Keep them under a shed or in a garage until spring.
Furniture pieces made of synthetic wicker, on the other hand, are weather-resistant and can therefore stay outside all year round.
Do I need to cover my patio furniture in winter?
You should cover your patio furniture in winter even if they’re fully weather resistant.
By doing so, you add a layer of protection that preserves the quality of your furniture pieces in days when spending time outdoors would be unbearable.
After all, your furniture won’t be getting the best use during the winter months, so covering them does make a lot of sense.
More importantly, covering your outdoor furniture in winter boosts the lifespan of the pieces, meaning they can last three times longer outdoors with a demand for zero repairs or possible replacements.
The STARTWO Patio Furniture Covers are by far the best option for covering furniture pieces that you leave outside during winter.
Designed for all-weather, and available in four sizes, this waterproof cover can keep snow and ice from getting to your furniture pieces and maintain their quality throughout the arctic season.
Can you leave patio cushions outside in winter?
Whether or not you can leave patio cushions outside in winter depends on the type of material used to design the cushions.
You can leave your cushions outside if they’re made of outdura or sunbrella fabrics because they are UV, mildew, and mold resistant.
However, it’s always a good practice to bring the cushions indoor during the cold season. And that’s whether they’re made of sunbrella our outdura fabric or otherwise.
Now that you know about the types of patio furniture that can be left outside in the winter, it should be easy to make up your mind about what pieces to buy.
Of course, price varies depending on the material used and the size of the furniture pieces, so it’s important to consider these factors before buying.
