How to Choose an Outdoor Dining Setting | OFI Guide

Guide  /  Outdoor Dining

How to Choose an Outdoor Dining Setting That Lasts

Size, shape and tabletop material. Get those three right and the rest follows.

Outdoor Furniture Ideas  ·  8 min read

An outdoor dining setting gets used and abused more than any other outdoor piece. Size, shape and material decide how well it copes.

An outdoor dining table takes more punishment than almost anything else outside. Meals, drinks, sun, rain, and years of people leaning on it. Buy the wrong one and it shows fast: a warped timber top, a rusted frame, chairs that fade a shade lighter every summer. This guide works through the three decisions that actually matter, how many it needs to seat, what shape suits your space, and which tabletop survives Australian conditions, so you can buy one outdoor dining setting that lasts instead of two that don't.

No. 01

How many seats you actually need

Start with how you eat outside most weeks, not the once-a-year Christmas lunch. A setting sized for the crowd you rarely host eats your whole patio for eleven months of the year. These are the widths to plan around, allowing roughly 60cm of table edge per person.

• 4 seats: around 90 to 120cm. Suits couples, small families, and courtyards.
• 6 seats: around 150 to 180cm. The most common family size, room for guests without dominating the space.
• 8 seats: around 200 to 240cm. For regular entertainers with the alfresco to hold it.
• 10+ seats: 250cm and up. Big families and frequent hosts. This is where an extendable table earns its keep.

Leave at least 90cm of clear space around the table so chairs pull out and people walk past without a squeeze. If that space is tight, size down or go extendable.

No. 02

Shape: round, rectangular, or extendable

Shape changes how a setting feels and how it fits. Match it to the space and the way you host.

• Round. Best for four to six and for conversation, since everyone can see everyone. Fits square courtyards and balconies well and has no sharp corners to walk into. Above six it gets too wide to reach across.
• Rectangular. The workhorse. Seats the most people per square metre and sits neatly against a wall or along a narrow alfresco. The default for six or more.
• Extendable. The answer when your everyday number and your entertaining number are different. Runs as a compact table day to day, then opens out for guests. Look for a smooth, self-storing extension mechanism rather than a loose add-on leaf.

If you host in bursts, an extendable table is usually the smarter buy than a permanently large one. Ranges like the Nardi outdoor tables in the Rio and Tevere lines are built around exactly this, extending in seconds without tools or a separate leaf to store.

Round for conversation, rectangular for capacity, extendable for both. Shape is a space decision as much as a style one.

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No. 03

Tabletop materials, ranked for Australian conditions

The tabletop is where an outdoor dining setting lives or dies. It takes direct sun, spills, hot dishes and rain, so this is the decision to get right. Here is how the common tops compare.

For a table that lives outside and gets used hard, ceramic and compact laminate are the safest buys. Both take a hot dish and a spilt drink without a mark and ask almost nothing of you. This is where cheaper settings typically fail: the frame might be fine, but a glass or untreated timber top ages badly inside a couple of summers.

“Buy the table for the meals you eat every week, and the top for the summers it has to survive.”

No. 04

Chairs: the half people underspend on

People pour the budget into the table and treat the chairs as an afterthought. The chairs are what fail first. They cop the same sun and rain with far less material to survive it, and you touch them every time you sit down.

• Material. Powder-coated aluminium and UV-stabilised resin handle Australian sun without fading or rusting. Rope and Batyline sling seats dry fast and stay comfortable without cushions.
• Comfort. If meals run long, you want a supportive back and, for lounge-style dining, a bit of give. Sit in them before you commit if you can.
• Storage. Stackable chairs make life easier on smaller patios and when weather rolls in.

Match the chairs to the table on material and quality, not just looks. A good set of outdoor dining chairs should still look near-new at year five, the same as the table they sit under.