Best patio bistro sets

Why a bistro set is the right product

The most common mistake on a small balcony is buying furniture scaled for a patio. A four-seat dining set on a narrow balcony means squeezing past chairs, no room to open the door fully, and a space that gets used less because using it is annoying.

A bistro set — two chairs and a small table — is not a compromised dining set. It is a different product designed for a different space, and on a balcony it is simply correct. Two seats that get used every evening are worth more than six that make the space unusable.

Balcony-specific rules

A balcony is a different environment from a garden patio in four ways that change what you should buy:

1. Nothing ever comes indoors. There is no shed, no garage, and often no spare room. Whatever you buy lives outside permanently, through every winter. That raises the bar on material more than anything else.
2. Wind is stronger and more turbulent. Higher up, wind speeds are greater and building edges create turbulence and updrafts. Furniture that would sit still in a garden can move on a fourth-floor balcony.
3. Things that blow off are dangerous. This is the serious one. A cushion or a light chair going over a railing is a hazard to whoever is below, and many buildings have rules about it for exactly that reason.
4. Drainage is usually poor. Balcony floors often hold shallow standing water in corners, which is the worst condition for steel feet and wooden end grain.

Wind several floors up

Practical measures, in rough order of effectiveness:

• Buy heavy. Weight is the only property that reliably keeps furniture in place. This is the one context where steel's weight-per-dollar is genuinely the right trade, despite the rust bill.
• Never leave cushions loose. Bring them in, or use ties. A cushion is the most likely thing to go over the railing.
• Skip glass tops. A glass top on a windy balcony is a bad combination of fragile and heavy.
• Fold and store when wind is forecast. The NOAA Beaufort chart is the readable version: when small branches on nearby trees are in continuous motion, secure things.
• Do not use a full-size umbrella. On a balcony, an open umbrella is a sail attached to a structure you do not own. A wall-mounted or clamp-on parasol with a small canopy is the sane version.

Which material for a balcony

If the balcony is large enough for a slightly bigger table, our round-table page covers the next size up — round works better than rectangular in a confined space for the same reasons.