14 Chic Pieces for Creating the Perfect Outdoor Escape

Everyone is spending more time at home these days, but as the warmer months approach, people are craving afternoons luxuriating outside. An artfully put-together exterior living area can help create a vacation-like ambience just steps from your back door. Whether designing around a swimming pool or furnishing a terrace, these refined outdoor tables, sofas, and decorative elements will help create the perfect place for entertaining alfresco, lounging poolside, or just imagining your next seaside getaway.

Rodolfo Dordoni’s collection with Cassina includes the new Sail Out modular sofa and cocktail tables. Photo: Courtesy of Cassina

1. Cassina

Cassina launched its first complete outdoor collection, Perspectives, this spring, featuring elegant pieces by Patricia Urquiola, Charlotte Perriand, Philippe Starck, and Rodolfo Dordoni. Each array was designed as a celebration of outdoor living, including Dordoni’s Sail Out modular sofa and Dine Out table and chairs, which looked to capture the glamour of 1950s holiday resorts in a grouping on a modern terrace.

Bali swivel chairs from Bernhardt’s debut outdoor collection. Photo: Courtesy of Bernhardt

2. Bernhardt

Bernhardt debuted its first outdoor collection at last fall’s High Point Market. Inspired by its distinguished designs for interior spaces, the selection of seating, dining and occasional tables, and accent pieces add striking visual interest. The textural rope weave of the Bali swivel chairs, for example, is softened by the graceful curves and geometric circle pattern that make this seat a beauty from all sides.

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The Governor Pool House lantern from Bevolo. Photo: Courtesy of Bevolo

3. Bevolo

A beautiful pool or terrace isn’t complete until it’s artfully illuminated. The traditional shapes of Bevolo’s outdoor lanterns, available in either gas or electric, readily melds into any aesthetic. Handmade in New Orleans, Bevolo’s Governor Pool House portable lantern is made to be used with candles, infusing any exterior landscape with an element of old-world romance.

Holly Hunt’s 15-piece Sonoran outdoor collection includes the Acacia dining table and Scarab dining chairs. Photo: Courtesy of Holly Hunt

4. Holly Hunt

For its second outdoor collection, Holly Hunt found inspiration in the Southwest, channeling the region’s mountainous terrain and desert colors into a line of furniture pieces enhanced with striking woven details. The 15-piece Sonoran collection includes a dining table with several seating options—including the line’s showstopper, the geometric Scarab dining chair—as well as a sectional, lounge chairs, and accent tables.

Sleek lounger chairs from Martyn Lawrence Bullard’s collection with Harbour. Photo: Courtesy of Harbour

5. Harbour

Designer Martyn Lawrence Bullard brings his love of Hollywood Regency to Harbour, an Australian furniture company renowned for creating luxury pieces for both indoors and out. Bullard’s designs are made with premium materials, like travertine, marble, and Indonesian A-Grade teak. Here, the rich wood is paired with the light-diffusing black Batyline mesh for a sun lounger that will enhance any pool deck.

Marcel Wander’s collection for Walters Wicker, Reverie, includes lounge chairs, sofas, and cocktail tables. Photo: Courtesy of Walters Wicker

6. Walters Wicker

The ultimate polymath, Marcel Wanders designs myriad whimsical and fantastical objects for a number of different brands on top of the many multilayered spaces he crafts for clients around the globe. For Walters Wicker, Wanders has created Reverie, a sculptural outdoor furniture collection of tables, chaise lounges, daybeds, and more. Built using a resin wicker shell, each piece is made to weather the elements in exceptional style.

McKinnon and Harris’s Otey and Buie rocking chairs.

7. McKinnon and Harris

Virginia-based outdoor furniture company McKinnon and Harris finds inspiration in traditional English gardens to create its elevated handcrafted aluminum pieces. The family-run business offers a variety of seating options, tables, and palm boxes that look like heirlooms but with a modern sensibility that would complement any landscape.

The Rock Garden collection, designed by André Fu for Janus et Cie, includes lounge chairs, sofa, and tables. Photo: Courtesy of Janus et Cie

8. Janus et Cie

Collaborating with many of the world’s most exciting designers, Janus et Cie provides outdoor furniture with unique textures and shapes. Its newest, Rock Garden, crafted in collaboration with Hong Kong’s André Fu, elevates the graceful lines of armchairs, accent tables, benches, dining tables, and sofas to pieces of pure poetry.

Authentic Provence’s custom Bac a Oranger planters. Photo: Carmel Brantley

9. Authentic Provence

It’s the details that transform a garden plot into a picture-perfect landscape. Authentic Provence is the go-to source for decorative planters, fountains, statuary, and other architectural elements that define some of the most beautiful plots in France and Italy. In addition to its cache of reclaimed antiques, the company produces items that re-create the best of 18th- and 19th-century design, like these elegant Bac a Oranger aluminum planters, ideal for everything from a terrace topiary to a kitchen garden of fresh herbs.

Allison Paladino’s outdoor collection with Century Furniture. Photo: Sargent Photography

10. Century

Palm Beach interior designer Allison Paladino was inspired by her love of sailing for her new collection of outdoor furnishings with Century. Available in a yacht club–like palette of crisp whites and soft ocean blues, the collection, aptly named Sail, includes powder-coated aluminum chairs and tables, the latter topped with opalescent back-painted tempered glass.

Ramón Esteve’s Caicos collection for RH includes this teak chaise. Photo: Courtesy of RH

11. RH

Known for its extensive array of furniture and decorative accents and long list of design collaborators, RH is branching out even more with two new collections with architectural designer Ramón Esteve. Recognized for his linear structures, the Valencia, Spain–based creative translates that symmetry into Caicos and Malta, two coastal-cool lines of perfectly proportioned outdoor furnishings.

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Roche Bobois’s Mah Jong collection of outdoor furnishings. Photo: Courtesy of Roche Bobois

12. Roche Bobois

Roche Bobois’s cheerful collections are highly sought after for their poppy colors and jubilant patterns. The company’s outdoor furnishings and fabrics are no exception, with prints and shapes that would be at home in Rio de Janeiro, Miami, or any other tropical destination. Adding a splash of summer fun is the brand’s iconic Mah Jong modular sofa, reinterpreted for the first time for the outdoors.

Dedon’s new Mbarq daybed from designer Sebastian Herkner. Photo: Courtesy of Dedon

13. Dedon 

One of the design industry’s favorite purveyors of luxurious outdoor furniture and fabrics, Dedon is this season introducing a collection inspired by the Mediterranean island of Corsica called Tour du Monde. Broken into four unique groupings—Rilly, Sealine, Mbarq, and Izon—each melds the company’s advanced weather-resistant materials with artisan-style craftsmanship.

Brown Jordan’s Oscar collection in Textured Pewter. Photo: Courtesy of Brown Jordan

14. Brown Jordan

This season, Brown Jordan is expanding on its celebrated Oscar collection by Ann Marie Vering, adding a soft blush finish to the already existing Dove and Textured Pewter colorways. Going above and beyond, the company is also adding organic finish Driftwood to the Drift teak collection, and presenting the 20Twenty line from Richard Frinier, which encompasses a series of minimalist seating in light and dark options.