Choosing the right poolside furniture can be an important part of keeping your pool area both safe and fun. Pool furniture comes in a variety of shapes and sizes with features that enhance its beauty, use, or both. By understanding how the pool furniture sets and pieces you choose affect safety, you can transform a plain pool area into a relaxing oasis, an efficient exercise location, or the perfect sight for your summer pool party. Settle into your aluminum and nylon fold-up lawn chair, get comfortable-ish, and take a look at how poolside furniture has evolved.
Designing A Comprehensive Pool Area
Why is furniture so important? After all, it’s a swimming pool, right? For many pool owners, their backyard oasis is so much more. It’s a place to entertain friends and family, a refuge they can use to get away from the outside world, and a pleasant place to truly enjoy the lifestyle they’ve worked so hard for during the week. Poolside furniture supports your vision for what your pool area can be by helping add functionality, set a mood, or just make it more comfortable to catch some sun or dry off a bit after a dip.
That’s why choosing the right furniture is so important. The poolside furniture you choose needs to fit your needs as a pool owner:
- Comfort: There’s no point buying furniture you won’t use, and you’re a lot more likely to make use of your furniture if it feels good. This highly subjective consideration relies on height, depth, softness, support, and so much more. When possible, it’s best to try out the furniture you’re considering before buying, but at the very least, you want to try some poolside furniture of different styles to determine what you like and don’t like.
- Durability: Your pool area may be relaxing for you, but it features a mixture of conditions that can be rough on furniture. Outdoor furniture should be designed to withstand the elements, shrugging off the high humidity localized around your pool area as well as the blistering heat of the sun, dry wind, and pouring rain. Often, this comes down to the materials used in production and the quality of manufacturing. Wood furniture can last years as long as it is cared for and nourished with the appropriate oils and sealants. Metal lasts longer, but care should be taken to avoid rust. Plastics and vinyls are cheaper, but they also become brittle faster. Any fabrics should be cleaned regularly following manufacturer recommendations and dried properly to avoid rot.
- Form: Just as you pick your indoor furniture to fit your decorating style, you want to consider the aesthetic you’re curating with your poolside furniture. Whether you’re keeping it light and organic with wicker and wood, minimalist with metal, or something extravagant that blends both, you want to consider how the design, colors, and fabrics will look around your pool area and the message they present to guests.
- Function: Your furniture is more than just a flat surface that keeps your towels and backside off the ground. Modern poolside furniture comes with an array of features to consider. From pool furniture sets that give you an all-in-one package with couches, ottomans, chairs, and lounges to single pieces that recline, convert, transform, or have added technology features, like chargers or speakers.
- Price: When deciding on your poolside furniture, cost often factors into the equation. While basic pool furniture sets can be affordable, premium pieces with the latest features, bespoke materials, or from a major brand can come with a higher price tag. While these may be the perfect choices for your backyard oasis, more budget-friendly alternatives can offer a similar experience that leaves more money for the hottest pool floats and toys.
- Safety: Whatever other criteria you have in mind, safety has to be a major concern when picking poolside furniture. You want strong furniture that doesn’t have sharp edges or articulation that has enough of a gap to allow for pinching. Any electronic features should be water-resistant. Your pool furniture should provide a stable platform on the ground around your pool, whether lawn, wood decking, concrete, or some other material.
Creating A Functional Space
Once you’ve decided on your poolside furniture, you need to decide the best place to set it up. Your new set of pool furniture should support your pool use by creating a flow around your pool that provides plenty of space for movement, relaxation, and activities.
- Leave Room For Safety: Furniture can be a tripping hazard, so you want to make sure it sits far enough back from the pool to allow freedom of movement for adults and children. You should also keep poolside furniture from blocking access to emergency or rescue equipment, such as hooks, first aid kits, and flotation devices. While you do want to leave space around the pool, you don’t want to move your furniture so far back that it can be used as a climbing aid to get over your removable mesh pool fence. Lightweight furniture can be lifted over and used for a step up, while heavier furniture can offer climbing holds for lighter kids. Accidental drownings cause thousands of injuries and deaths every year. Do your part to prevent them at your pool.
- Make It Make Sense: Seats near tables, your favorite lounge chair under the umbrella for reading, and a dining table near the patio grill can all fit into your design. Think about how you use not only your pool but the area surrounding it, then position your poolside furniture to support your lifestyle.
- Store It Correctly: Storing your pool furniture the right way extends its life and can help you prevent damage to your pool area. Depending on the materials, this may mean covering it for the winter months, putting it in the shed, or pulling it under your patio to protect it from the elements. If high winds are expected, you may want to anchor the furniture or move in into the lee of a building or other structure. While you can store some furniture temporarily in your pool, as some have with lightweight metal furniture during hurricanes, it can contaminate your water, and your water can damage some poolside furniture materials. As soon as possible, the furniture should be removed and both it and your pool water cleaned. Furniture should never be stored on top of a swimming pool safety cover or net, as it can easily snag or damage the material, and while they are designed to support weight in an emergency to help prevent accidental drowning, they aren’t engineered for continuous load-bearing.
- Take Care Of It Properly: Read your manufacturer’s directions or talk to your furniture dealer about the best way to keep your furniture looking good and protected for years of use. While most pool furniture sets can be cleaned with a garden hose and gentle detergent, this isn’t always the case, and some furniture, such as wood and wicker, could benefit from treatments that both moisturize and protect the natural fibers.
- Add A Layer Of Protection: Creating a safer pool often changes as your pool area and its features evolve. If you’re protecting your pool from unsupervised access with a single barrier, such as a removable mesh pool fence, consider adding a second level of protection. A pool safety net, for example, can help keep blown pool furniture out of the water as easy as it does people, and it provides more of a deterrent to unsupervised swimming should a determined child use poolside furniture to bypass your latched gate.
Neighborhood Pool Safety Pros
Your local Lifeguard on Duty installer lives in your community and is right down the road when you need to protect your pool. A no-cost, no-obligation quote gives you a written estimate tailored to your pool’s needs. Find out how affordable peace of mind is. Request your free estimate from Lifeguard on Duty today.
