Poolside furniture for the pool restaurant and the pool bar

A guest comes up from the water at half past twelve, towel over one shoulder, and wants lunch. The table she sits at is ten steps from the pool and in full sun. Within the hour your team will clear it, wipe it and seat the next party, and by evening the same tables carry candles and a dinner menu.

Poolside furniture on a hotel or resort property means that restaurant and its bar: dining chairs, dining and bar tables, bar stools and umbrellas, all listed for outdoor use. Set it with the same care you give the restaurant inside. Guests notice a crooked row as quickly by the pool as they do under a chandelier.

Patio listing before anything else

The first filter is simple and it is not negotiable. A piece belongs by the pool only if its record lists it for patio use. Carry a dining room chair out to the deck and the sun fades its upholstery, damp swells its wood, and spray rusts its steel. Our warranty does not extend to indoor furniture used outside, however briefly.

Look inside our patio chairs and the frames are of four kinds: aluminum, resin, synthetic teak, coated steel. An outdoor resin armchair is a good example of the type: a metal and resin frame in black, a resin seat at 17 1/2 inches, a width of 24 1/2 inches, and a listed capacity of 500 pounds. Resin and aluminum both shrug off a wet swimsuit better than any upholstered seat. The pool chair guide takes the chair question further, frame by frame.

Counting seats on the pool deck

Start with the dining area, not the whole deck. Mark off the space the pool restaurant can take without crowding the walkway along the water, then work out seats. For early planning, a full-service dining room runs about 12 to 15 square feet per seat.

Here is a worked example. Say the pool restaurant can claim 1,300 square feet for its tables. Allow 13 square feet a guest and you arrive at 100 seats. Split them as 20 tables of four and 10 tables for two and you reach the same 100. For the fours, a 36-inch square is comfortable and a 30-by-48-inch rectangle lines up well along the water; for the twos, 24 by 30 inches is the standard size, 30 by 30 the generous one.

Leave service aisles of about 36 inches. By the pool that figure earns its keep twice, because the same lanes carry servers with trays and guests with wet feet. Hold the whole count loosely. The deck's permitted occupancy decides the real number, and the architect or designer on the project tests the plan against local code before a single table goes out.

Tables that hold an umbrella

Midday sun makes the umbrella part of the table. A table with an umbrella hole saves a separate stand beside every four-top and keeps the aisle clear. The Ella table set with umbrella base is listed for patio use, and its record gives an aluminum top on a steel base, a height of 30 inches, and a hole for the umbrella pole. Sizes run from 30 by 30 inches up to 30 by 72. The whole set of patio tables with an umbrella hole is worth a look before you settle the fours.

Then match the umbrella to its base. The Casey 7.5 ft aluminum umbrella has an aluminum pole 1 1/2 inches across, fiberglass ribs, a push lift, an overall height of 96 inches and a ground clearance of 82 inches. That clearance is just under seven feet, which matters when a tall guest stands up from the table. Where the umbrella stands free, our cast iron umbrella base weighs 95 pounds and lists 7 1/2, 9 and 11 foot umbrellas as compatible sizes. Browse patio umbrellas for canopy fabrics and pole finishes, and our poolside table guide for table sizes in detail.

The pool bar line

The pool bar works like the lobby bar with the roof taken off. Stools at bar height want seats around 29 to 31 inches against a bar of 40 to 42 inches, spaced 24 to 30 inches apart from seat center to seat center. A 30-foot pool bar is 360 inches, which gives about twelve stools at 30 inches and fifteen at 24.

Choose stools from the patio bar stools only. A resin outdoor bar stool sits at 29 1/2 inches, weighs 11 pounds, carries 400 pounds, and comes in seven colors, from black and white to taupe, red, orange and tropical green. Light stools are easy to lift aside when the deck is hosed down at close.

Watch the footrest height too. Guests at a pool bar are often barefoot, and a stool whose footrest sits where a bare heel can rest comfortably will be used, while one that is too high gets ignored. Sit on a sample stool at your own bar before you count the order.

The mistake on event nights

A pool party for a wedding or a conference often borrows chairs from the ballroom. It looks like a sensible shortcut. It is the quickest way to ruin padded banquet chairs, and indoor pieces used outside are excluded from the warranty. Plan the event count into the patio order instead, and keep the banquet chairs indoors where they belong.

The arithmetic is easy to do in advance. If the pool hosts a welcome reception for 140 a few times a season and the restaurant seats 100 on an ordinary day, the gap is 40 chairs. Forty stackable patio chairs in a storeroom by the deck cost less over a few seasons than replacing ballroom chairs that went outside once too often.

What the pool asks at close

Our outdoor pieces are warranted for six months, and that cover lapses for outdoor furniture left without care. So the closing routine is part of the purchase. Rinse chlorine and sunscreen off frames and seats, let tables and stools drain, and cover or store the furniture when the season ends. Close the umbrellas every night; a canopy left open in a gust is the one thing on the deck that can travel.

Put the routine on paper before the furniture arrives. Save the pool restaurant and the pool bar as separate plans in property plans, add a note to each with the closing steps, and download the sheet for the outdoor team. Then read the resort furniture guide, which carries the same split between inside and outside across the whole property.