BY CHRISTINE LAUE
Carolee Hoth spent $15,000 to $20,000 furnishing the latest room of her west Omaha home: her backyard.
Four swivel chairs surround a low table in a covered area next to the hot tub. On another level, two club chairs and a curved, three-piece sectional wrap around a fire pit.
Cushions in chocolate brown and seafoam blue with matching fringed pillows cover the heavy cast-aluminum furniture frames. The family of five liked the furniture from Mulhall’s so much that they ordered two more chaise lounges and a table for the deck surrounding the pool.
“You can either spend a little and buy every two or three years as it breaks down and fades, or this has the quality that is going to last,” said Hoth, who lives in the Huntington Park subdivision just north of 161st and Blondo Streets. “This was a way to beautify our backyard, knowing this is going to be sort of our sanctuary.”
Local and national lawn furniture retailers say shoppers this spring and summer will notice more choices, in more durable materials, and in styles reflecting that consumers continue to view their backyards as extensions of the comfy indoors.
Items that may prove popular this season are low dining tables, La-Z-Boy recliners and anything big and relaxing.
“A lot of patio furniture has been moving this way for years, but this is the year you’re really seeing an upswing,” said Jennifer Wilson, a Mooresville, N.C.-based spokeswoman with Lowe’s. “Customers are making an investment in patio furniture because now that the materials are so durable, they’re not going to have to buy them every year.”
Nebraska Furniture Mart executive vice president Bob Batt
compared the trend of emulating the living room outdoors to people’s emulating movie theaters with home theaters.
“It’s a way of life now,” Batt said. “People are building more and more elaborate backyards. There’s gazebos with screened in porches, as well as fire pits and waterfalls. It’s a hot, hot category.”
Batt said that sales in the summer furniture category, which includes items such as outdoor grills, grew about 33 percent at Nebraska Furniture Mart from 2012 to 2013.
Wilson said Lowe’s doesn’t disclose sales figures on individual items or subcategories. But the company’s 2012 annual report, the latest available, shows that the seasonal living category – which includes furniture and some other outdoor products – increased from $1.97 million in 2004 to $2.21 million in 2012.
The Earl May Nursery & Garden Center at 1718 Madison Ave. in Council Bluffs started carrying lawn furniture this year because of customer demand, said store manager Josh Cherington.
Chaise lounges and wicker sets there sell well, along with a wrought iron 48-inch-diameter dining table with four swivel chairs that retails for about $1,480.
“I bet I get customers asking about them daily,” he said.
Deep-seating continues as a big trend everywhere.
A Sam’s Warehouse spokeswoman said a $599 La-Z-Boy recliner is a popular way people are taking the indoors outside.
Lowe’s even offers a swinging daybed, Wilson said.
“Anything that is big and comfortable is extremely popular this year,” Wilson said, who noted that one oldie, the rocking chair, is making a comeback.
A new table height will be available everywhere from discount to independent stores this year.
The standard is a 30-inch-tall dining table, said Deb Kirchner, director of home furnishings at Mulhall’s, 120th Street and West Maple Road. Then came the so-called conversation table, or a coffee table. Then last year, retailers introduced one in between those two heights. At 26 inches high, the low dining table is tall enough for the new deep-seating to scoot under but still feels more like you’re in a living room than a kitchen.
Some low dining tables have an interchangeable center insert that can hold an ice bucket or a fire pit, said Jenni Clark, lawn furniture buyer at Lanoha Nurseries, 192nd Street and West Center Road.
At Mulhall’s, low dining tables run from $800 to $1,200, depending on the material and size. The matching chairs run $900 to $1,700 each, including cushions that feature fade- and water-resistant fabrics. Synthetic wicker chairs with deep seating start as low as $499 each, including a cushion.
Independent stores like Mulhall’s, Kirchner said, are offering fewer of the inexpensive lawn furniture items such as sling chairs and stackable plastic chairs, opting instead to sell higher-end furniture to compete with big-box stores.
It may have worked for Mulhall’s, which has seen a 25 percent increase in sales in each of the two past years, Kirchner said. She expects some leveling off this year, with projected growth slowing to 10 percent to 15 percent in the category.
But Nebraska Furniture Mart’s Batt said the plastic stackable chairs and sling chairs are still big sellers and remain standards at the store.
“Not everybody has a lot of money,” Batt said. “You have to accommodate everybody who walks through the door. If you have a whole bunch of people coming over, you want that stackable, molded-plastic chair.”
Some homeowners, like Hoth, don’t mind the higher price tag when it means it will last longer and they won’t have to chase it after a Midwestern thunderstorm.
She still has some of the woven plastic furniture from when she got married 25 years ago. Despite lifetime warranties, the chairs sit – faded and with broken straps – among the new furniture.
“You can really tell the difference,” she said. “We intend to replace the (old) stuff with this quality.”
