Patio furniture from lounge corner to dining end

A table in front of the kitchen door, loungers in shade by four o'clock, a sofa facing the neighbor's wall: each of these mistakes is made on paper, weeks before the delivery truck arrives. Poliform, the furniture house from Inverigo in northern Italy, makes a short outdoor list, and a short list rewards a good plan: you choose fewer pieces, so each one has to stand in the right place.

Measure, then sketch the paths

Take the length and width of the terrace and sketch it on squared paper at a rough scale. Add everything that cannot move: doors, steps, the grill, built-in planters. Then trace how people cross it, from the kitchen to the table or from the gate to the house, and leave those paths clear, about three feet wide and wider where someone carries a tray.

Next, watch the sun. Check the terrace at the hour you will use it. A strip that bakes at midday can sit in shade by late afternoon, and loungers belong where the light is when you are home.

Put dining near the kitchen

Plates travel from the kitchen, so the table goes close to that door. Poliform offers two outdoor tables. The Henry outdoor table by Emmanuel Gallina, rebuilt in 2025 in aluminium and teak, keeps the outline of the indoor Henry. The Curve outdoor table carries rope details and takes its lines from boats.

Leave about three feet behind each chair; a seated guest needs that much to get up without hitting the railing. On a narrow terrace that allowance, and not the table, decides how many people you can seat.

Put the lounge where the evening lands

Poliform Crew gives a lounge group its center. Jean-Marie Massaud builds these tables from ceramic, with generous tops and plain lines, and the surface is ceramic through its thickness. A ceramic top keeps its color in strong sun, takes a wet glass for an afternoon without a ring and needs no seasonal oil. It is heavy and hard, and it can chip if you drop something heavy on an edge, so plan the delivery route and keep cast iron pans off it. See the Crew collection.

Around it, pick seating from one family so frames and fabrics match: Ketch in solid iroko with backs that flex like a sail, or Mad Out with backs of hand-woven rope. Two compact Mad Out armchairs fit a balcony where one sofa would not.

Give the sun its own strip

Poliform Magnolia is Emmanuel Gallina's family from 2023, and its sunbed is the outdoor member: iroko, a reclining back with the mechanism hidden in the frame, soft cushioning and wheels at one end. One person can roll it into shade or out to the pool edge. Iroko is a dense hardwood with natural oils, which is why Gallina used it here and not on the indoor chairs of the same family. See the Magnolia collection.

The Ketch sunbed and the Henry sun bed are the other two options. Match the lounger to the wood already on the terrace: iroko beside a Ketch sofa, teak and aluminium beside a Henry table.

Finish the edge

A terrace full of furniture at one height looks flat. Massaud drew a set of Crew vases to stand with the tables, in three sizes, in pure and enamelled ceramic. Group two or three of them at the edge of the deck and the eye gets something taller than a sofa back.

Seats for an ordinary evening

Count the seats you need on an ordinary evening, then add the chairs you would borrow for a party. Buy for the ordinary evening. Decide where cushions go in bad weather: a dry shelf, a deck box or a garage. Rope and ceramic shrug off a storm, and cushions do better indoors.

Attach your sketch to the form at the foot of the page and add the size in feet, the direction the terrace faces and how many seats you want. We reply with a plan filled from the Poliform outdoor list, the finishes on offer and a written price for each piece.