The Outdoor Living Room

Designing your patio for peak Inland Northwest summer — with furniture built to live outside

Inland Northwest summers are a kind of regional inside joke. We complain about the rain for nine months, and then for ten weeks beginning around the Fourth of July, the sky finally let’s go, the light comes back, the evenings stretch past nine o'clock, and we remember why we put up with the rest of it. It's a season worth honoring. And the homes that honor it best treat the patio, deck, or back porch not as an afterthought, but as a fully designed extra room — one that gets more use per square foot in July and August than almost anywhere else in the house.

If you've been thinking about your outdoor space and feeling like the time to do something about it has finally arrived, you're right. The first week of July is genuinely the best moment to invest. The full stretch of summer is still ahead. Long evenings, warm nights, holiday weekends, and weeks of golden Spokane light are all waiting. Here's how our design team thinks about outdoor furniture — and how to set up a space you'll actually live in for the rest of the summer.

Treat Your Patio Like a Real Room

The biggest reason most outdoor spaces feel underused isn't the weather. It's that they were furnished like an afterthought. A couple of plastic chairs facing nothing in particular. A small bistro table tucked against a wall. A grill in the corner. None of it composed, none of it inviting, none of it actually saying 'sit down and stay a while.'

The fix is to design your outdoor space the way you'd design a living room. Give it a focal point — a fire pit, a view, a big planted bed. Compose the seating around it. Add a coffee table or a low surface where drinks and books can land. Bring in a side table or two. Layer in lighting. Add a rug. The same principles that make an indoor room feel finished apply outdoors. The minute you start treating the patio like a room, you start using it like one.

Materials That Actually Hold Up

Outdoor furniture has to earn a different kind of trust. It's going to live in sun, rain, wind, the occasional smoke from a fire pit, and — in our region — through dramatic temperature swings between July afternoons and October mornings. The materials matter more than they do indoors, because everything is being tested constantly.

Teak is the gold standard for outdoor wood. It's dense, oily, dimensionally stable, and weathers beautifully to a silvery patina if you let it (or you can oil it to keep its honey tone). Powder-coated aluminum frames are lightweight, completely rust-resistant, and ideal for chairs or tables that need to be moved around. Wrought iron and steel frames are heavier but offer a more traditional look — make sure any iron furniture has a quality powder-coat finish to prevent rust. Synthetic woven materials (the good kind, like all-weather wicker made from HDPE or polypropylene) have come a long way and look almost indistinguishable from natural wicker but won't rot or fade.

What you want to avoid: untreated softwoods, low-grade plastics that go brittle in UV, or any 'outdoor' furniture that's really just indoor furniture with a coat of paint. Cheap outdoor furniture fails fast — usually right when summer is ramping up and you want to use it most.

Cushions and Outdoor Fabrics

Outdoor cushions are where comfort and durability meet, and they're worth getting right. The wrong cushion looks fine for a season and then fades, mildews, or sags. The right cushion lasts for years and looks better at the end of summer than at the beginning.

Look for solution-dyed acrylic fabrics — Sunbrella is the most familiar brand, but there are several other excellent options on the market. Solution-dyed means the color is built into the fiber rather than applied to the surface, so the fabric resists UV fading, mildew, and stains in a way no surface-treated fabric can match. Quality outdoor cushions also use quick-dry foam cores that don't hold water — so if you forget to bring them in before a summer thunderstorm, they don't turn into wet sponges.

We also recommend choosing fabric weights and colors thoughtfully. Lighter neutrals stay cool in the sun and read clean and modern. Deeper colors hide pollen, pine needles, and the occasional iced-coffee splash much better. Bring in pattern through pillows and throws — they're easier to swap out and let you change the look without recommitting to a whole new set.

Lighting Makes the Evening

Outdoor lighting is the difference between a patio you use until sundown and one you use until midnight. PNW summer evenings stretch long, and the right lighting is what makes those late hours feel magical instead of dim.

Layer outdoor lighting the same way you layer it inside. String lights overhead are the easy, beautiful workhorse — they create that warm canopy that immediately makes a space feel inviting. Add a lantern or two for atmosphere on a side table. Use low-voltage path lights to mark steps and edges safely. If you have a fire pit, that's your accent light. If you don't, candles in hurricane lanterns are the next best thing.

Warm bulbs (2200K to 2700K), always. Cool light has no place on a summer patio.

An Outdoor Rug Changes Everything

If your patio still feels like a patio and not a room, an outdoor rug will often solve it in a single move. The right rug grounds the seating area, defines the space, and adds the textural softness that hard outdoor surfaces are missing. Plus, modern outdoor rugs are remarkably good — woven from polypropylene or recycled PET, they look like indoor rugs but shrug off rain and clean with a hose.

Size it generously. As with indoor rugs, too small reads awkward. The rug should at least extend under the front legs of all the seating — ideally fully under the coffee table and well past the edges of the seating arrangement. A 8x10 or 9x12 is the right size for most patio conversation areas.

Don't Forget Shade

Even in Spokane, summer afternoons get bright. A patio without shade is one you'll use for breakfast and dinner but abandon between noon and four. Shade isn't an afterthought — it's an enabler.

Options range from permanent (a pergola, an extended roof line, a built-in awning) to flexible (a cantilever umbrella that swings over different seating areas as the sun moves, retractable shade sails, a market umbrella through a table). Cantilever umbrellas are our most-recommended option for clients who already have a finished patio and want flexibility without construction. Get a quality one with solid materials and a heavy weighted base — cheap umbrellas blow over in the first real wind.

Shade also extends the season. The right cover lets you use a patio in light rain too — meaning you get use out of the space in May and September, not just July and August.

Plan for Storage and the Off-Season

Even the best outdoor furniture lasts longer if it's cared for. In our climate, that usually means bringing cushions inside (or into a sealed storage box) over the winter and either covering or storing the frames. Quality outdoor furniture covers are worth the investment — they keep the worst of the weather off and dramatically extend the life of every piece.

If you have garage or shed space, consider a dedicated zone for outdoor cushions and accessories. If you don't, a single quality storage box doubles as a piece of furniture in season (an end-of-bench storage chest is a beautiful, multi-purpose piece) and a winter home for everything off-season.

Now Is Genuinely the Time

If you're reading this in early July, you have a real window. The full back half of summer is ahead. Long weekends. Cookouts. Late dinners outside. Mornings on the patio with coffee while the air is still cool. Even if your outdoor space is bare today, you can have it composed and usable within a couple of weeks — and you'll get months of real use out of it before the season turns.

Investing in outdoor furniture sometimes feels like a luxury, especially in a region where summer is short. We'd argue the opposite. Because our summer is short, the rooms we use during it deserve more attention, not less. The patio that turns into your favorite place to sit between July and October repays its cost in memory every single year — and lasts for many summers to come.

Come Visit

Stop into our Spokane showroom at 2826 N. Ruby to see outdoor pieces in person, talk through what would work for your space, and feel the difference quality outdoor materials make. Our design team can help you plan layouts, recommend cushion fabrics, source umbrellas and lighting, and even coordinate delivery so you can be using your new space within days, not weeks.

Summer is here. We'd love to help you make the most of it.