Poolside chairs for the pool restaurant, chosen for the wet seat and the lunch rush

At noon the pool terrace fills with guests who walked straight from the water to the menu. They sit down damp, they leave a ring on the seat, and they still expect the table to look as set as the dining room indoors. The chair takes all of that.

So treat it as a dining chair first. It stands at a 30-inch table, holds a guest through a two-course lunch, and must be dry, wiped and squared to its table before the next party is seated. Below we cover the frames we list for patio use, how seats deal with water, how chair width decides the table plan, and what the warranty asks of your team when the day ends.

Frames that belong beside the water

Every chair you set out by the pool should carry patio use on its product page. We hold that line firmly. A wood chair or an upholstered seat carried out from the restaurant fades, swells or rusts in sun and splash, and the warranty stops short of any indoor piece taken outside.

Four materials earn a place on the deck: aluminum, resin, synthetic teak, and steel with a protective coating. They read differently from across the deck. The aluminum and steel patio chairs keep a slim, upright line that suits a pool restaurant with printed menus and folded napkins. The resin patio chairs look softer and come in a wider spread of colors, which helps when the deck has its own palette. Faux teak on a metal frame sits between them, warm like wood at a glance and metal where it counts.

Read one more line before you choose. A few outdoor chairs carry the note covered patio only. Those chairs belong under a roof or a fixed canopy, not on an open deck where rain and midday sun reach them every day. It is an easy line to miss when the photo shows a sunny terrace.

The seat after the guest stands up

Water is the daily test. A guest leaves, and what stays on the seat decides whether the next guest sits on a dry chair or a damp one.

The black armchair with a faux teak seat puts plastic teak over aluminum, sits at 17 3/4 inches, and carries a 500 lb capacity. Its side chair partner, the armless version of the same black aluminum and faux teak chair, keeps that seat height and weighs 10 lbs. Both stack, and both are listed for indoor as well as patio service, which lets the pair carry on through a covered bar or a breakfast room if the season ends early.

Resin from frame to seat is the other route. The stacking resin dining chair measures 19 3/4 inches wide, has a 17 1/2-inch seat height and weighs 8 lbs. A solid resin seat wipes dry in one towel pass, which matters more at the pool than anywhere else on the property.

Carry this rule of thumb to every chair you consider: if one pass of a towel cannot leave the seat dry, it stays indoors. Loose seat pads fail it at once.

Chair width sets the table plan

Say your pool restaurant runs ten tables for four, forty chairs in all, and you are weighing the armchair at 23 1/4 inches wide against its 19 3/4-inch side chair.

On a 36-inch square table, one guest to a side, both fit. The armchair leaves 12 3/4 inches of open edge per side and the side chair leaves 16 1/4. A 36-inch square slatted aluminum table with an umbrella hole sets that four cleanly. Now switch to a 30 by 48 rectangle and seat two guests along each long side. Two armchairs need 46 1/2 inches of a 48-inch edge, which leaves an inch and a half between elbows and the table corner. Two side chairs need 39 1/2 inches and leave 8 1/2. On paper the armchairs fit. At lunch they bump.

That is the mistake to avoid: ordering armchairs for every seat because one chair looked right in a single photograph, then finding every long side too short. Put armchairs at the squares and the ends, and side chairs along the long edges. The frame and seat match, so the deck still reads as one set.

Weight belongs in the same sum. Forty armchairs at 12 lbs each come to 480 lbs, and forty side chairs at 10 lbs come to 400 lbs, which is the load your team lifts each night if the chairs go under cover. Keep 18 to 24 inches clear at the back of each seat so guests can pull out, and keep service aisles around 36 inches, wider where the deck stays wet. The poolside table guide works through the tables themselves.

Care the season asks for

Patio chairs carry a six-month warranty against defects in materials and workmanship. It does not reach outdoor furniture left without care, and cleaning with the wrong agents is excluded too. Rinse the frames, stand them up to drip dry, and put them under cover or into storage once the pool shuts for the year.

Pick one person per shift for the close. That person rinses, stands the chairs to drain, and checks each frame for anything loose. When something does look wrong, our warranty page explains the claim: write to us with your order reference and what went wrong, and attach photos showing the whole chair, a close view of the fault, and its labels.

The rest of the deck follows the same logic. The hotel patio furniture guide covers the terrace beyond the pool, and the poolside furniture overview brings the chairs, tables, bar stools and umbrellas together. The wider patio chair range holds every chair we list for outdoor use, with the plastic teak patio chairs in their own group.

Setting the deck before opening day

Give the pool restaurant its own property plan, apart from the terrace and the indoor dining room, so its counts and finishes never blur with the rooms beside it. Each frame color and seat color goes on a line of its own, since a second finish of the same chair counts as a separate line. Copy the plan when a second property opens a pool of its own.

Then order free samples of the finish and hold one against the deck tiles at noon, when the light is hardest. The swatch box goes out by UPS Ground, and the property can expect it in 2 to 3 business days on most routes. For next season's top-up, have a new swatch sent and agree the color with us first, since finish lists change and a mismatched chair shows at the first lunch.