Patio restaurant chairs

87 chairs for the curb, the roof and the courtyard. Frames run from aluminum and painted metal to resin and steel; seats come woven, slatted, solid or mesh. Make the first cut by breakdown. If the row goes in every night, start with the chairs that stack and work outward from there.

The stack decides the night

More than half of these chairs stack. On a sidewalk that has to be bare by closing, no other feature saves as much labor. A black steel stacking chair with an 18-inch seat is listed for patio use and rated to 500 pounds, so it handles the street and the stack alike.

Arms are the other split, and roughly a third of the range has them. Armchairs feel settled at a long dinner. They also take width, and width is the one thing a sidewalk never has to spare. Give each guest two feet of table edge, then see whether an armchair still fits the two-top against the curb.

Seats that face the weather

Slats and mesh let a shower pass through. Solid seats hold a puddle until somebody wipes them. Woven faux rattan sits between the two and looks warm when the light drops.

• Rattan patio chairs: woven seats on aluminum, bamboo-look and metal frames
• Aluminum and steel patio chairs: metal seats, mesh backs and one swivel model
• Plastic teak patio chairs: faux teak slats, several for covered patios only
• Resin patio chairs: resin frames with perforated, slatted or solid backs

A handful of chairs in this group are marked for covered patios only. Check that line on every listing. Those chairs belong under a roof or an awning; the rest are listed for open patio use.

Seat height and the table

Seat heights, where listed, sit between 17 and 18 inches. Pull one up to a dining table near 29 or 30 inches tall and a guest gets about a foot of room under the top. For a rail or a high-top, cross over to patio bar stools.

Price follows the frame more than the seat. Single chairs start around $58 and run to $384 for a resin club chair. Each line on the order is one configuration, so twenty black chairs and twenty grey ones are two lines.

Widths vary more than people expect. A resin armchair with a perforated back is 22 inches across, while the steel stacking chair is 17 3/4. Over a row of twelve, that gap is more than four feet of curb. Put the row in an outdoor plan and the counts stay with the space.