What garden furniture can stay out all winter?

Teak, powder-coated aluminium, and synthetic rattan over an aluminium frame all stay out through a British winter with no work at all. Steel frames stay out too but want their chips touched up once a year. Everything soft — cushions, seat pads, parasols — comes in, without exception, by the end of October.

Almost all garden furniture sold in the UK is described as weatherproof, and almost all of it is, for rain. A British winter is not really a rain problem. It is a freeze-thaw problem, a standing-damp problem and a wind problem, and materials that shrug off a wet July can still come apart by March.

Rule one. Look at the frame, not the weave

Synthetic rattan is a wrapping rather than a material, so what decides its winter is the frame underneath it. Over aluminium it is a year-round proposition. Over steel it depends entirely on the coating.

The reason that matters is where the failure happens. A scratch that reaches steel rusts outwards from that point beneath the weave, where you cannot see it, and by the time it shows on the surface the frame has been going for a year.

Rule two. Everything soft comes in

Cushions, seat pads, parasols and sling seats. No exceptions and no arguments. It is the foam and the fabric that suffer rather than the frame — foam holds water, and water in foam through a freeze does not recover.

They do not need to be indoors so much as out of the weather. A storage box, a shed or a hallway is enough. Sling seats are the ones people forget: the aluminium frame is fine outside and the tensioned fabric is not, which makes those chairs a soft furnishing with legs.

Rule three. A non-breathable cover is worse than no cover

A cover that does not breathe traps moisture against the furniture and holds it there. Under a fitted plastic cover, a teak set can grow mould on surfaces that would have stayed clean in the open air, because the timber never gets a dry spell.

If you cover furniture, use a breathable cover and lift it occasionally on a dry day. If that is more attention than you will realistically give it, leaving weatherproof furniture uncovered is the better decision. It is what the material is for.

Rule four. Get it off the ground

Standing water is what does the damage, and it collects at the feet. Timber wicks it up, steel rusts from the base, and anything hollow fills and then freezes.

Feet, a couple of slabs, or moving the set onto paving rather than grass for the winter all achieve the same thing. It is the cheapest single thing you can do for a garden set and almost nobody does it.

Rule five. On an exposed site, buy something that stacks

Lightweight aluminium is easy to move for mowing, which is the same property that makes it move on its own in a gale. On a roof terrace, a coastal garden, or anywhere with a clear run at it, either choose heavier pieces or accept that some things need putting away when the forecast turns.

A stacking set solves this better than a heavy set does, because the answer to wind is having somewhere for the furniture to be that is not the middle of the lawn.

Rule six. Do the touching-up in October, not March

A chip in a powder coat is a small job in autumn and a rust patch in spring. The same is true of a split in a timber joint, which takes on water all winter and opens further with every freeze.

Twenty minutes at the end of the season is the whole of the maintenance most garden furniture ever needs, and it is the difference between a set lasting five years and fifteen.

By where you are putting it

Lawn. Move it onto something hard for the winter if you can. Furniture left on grass sits in standing water for months, and the grass beneath it dies anyway.

Patio and paving. The easiest case. Feet or slabs under the legs, cushions in, and leave the frames where they are.

Balcony and roof terrace. Wind is the whole problem. Choose stacking or heavy, and never leave a parasol up, even folded — a folded parasol in a gale is a sail on a pole.

Coastal. Salt air attacks coatings faster than inland weather does. Rinse with fresh water at the end of the season, check every chip, and prefer aluminium, which cannot rust, over coated steel.

Under a tree. Sap and leaf fall stain, and wet leaves left on a surface all winter mark timber permanently. Sweep it clear in November rather than in spring.

Eight of our sets, and the October job for each

Frame is what the piece is listed as being made from. The job column is rules two, four and six applied to that material — the whole of what these sets need before winter.

Every row says cushions in, because rule two has no exceptions. Beyond that the difference between the aluminium sets and the rest is about ten minutes a year.

The short version

Teak, powder-coated aluminium and rattan on an aluminium frame stay out all year and need washing, nothing more. Steel wants its chips touched up. Everything soft comes in by the end of October. Skip the plastic cover, get the legs off the ground, and if the site is exposed, buy something that stacks.