A good cover is the cheapest insurance you can buy for outdoor furniture. A bad one can be worse than nothing. Too loose and it flogs itself to pieces in the wind, scuffing the furniture as it goes. Too tight, or with no airflow, and it traps moisture until mould moves in underneath. Nearly every cover complaint we hear traces back to fit, not fabric. So this guide is mostly about measuring, with the fabric and features covered along the way.
Measure the furniture, not your memory
Get the tape measure out before you shop. You need three numbers. Length, width and height, each taken at the widest point of the whole group you plan to cover.
For a dining setting, that means measuring with the chairs pushed in the way they will sit under the cover. Chairs usually poke out past the tabletop, so the chairs set the length and width, not the table. For height, measure the taller of the table and the chair backs.
For a lounge setting, measure the full footprint of the arrangement, including any chaise section that juts out. Note which side it juts from while you are there.
Write the numbers down. Furniture is always bigger than it looks in your head, and guessing is how covers end up two sizes wrong.
A little loose is right, a lot is wrong
A cover should sit slightly bigger than the furniture, with roughly 5 to 10 centimetres of ease. That slack lets air move and makes the cover easy to get on and off, which matters more than you would think. A cover that is a wrestle to fit is a cover that stops getting used by July.
Beyond that, extra size stops helping. A vastly oversized cover pools water in its hollows, catches wind like a sail and chafes against the furniture edges with every gust. If your setting falls between two cover sizes, take the closer fit up rather than something metres too big.
Length is the other half of the fit question. A cover should come most of the way down the furniture but ideally stop just short of the ground, leaving a gap for air to enter. A cover sealed to the floor keeps rain out and humidity in.
Match the shape, not just the size
Covers come shaped for a reason. A round table setting under a square cover leaves four corners of loose fabric flapping. An L-shaped lounge under a rectangular cover leaves a tent of dead space where water and wind get to work. Where your furniture has a distinct shape, look for a cover cut to match it. Round settings, corner lounges and cantilever umbrellas all have dedicated shapes available. For a round table and chairs in particular, our guide to covering a round outdoor setting works through the 260 cm limit on the 9-piece round cover and where the chairs have to go. Modular settings are the awkward exception, because their shape changes every time you move a piece — our guide to covering a modular or corner lounge explains how to combine two or three covers when no single one fits. If you would rather work backwards from a list of real sizes, our guide to outdoor furniture covers by setting size sets out the cover dimensions for 7, 9, 11 and 13-piece settings.
Chairs on their own are worth a mention. Stackable chairs can be stacked and covered as one column under a chair cover, which takes seconds and uses one cover instead of six. It is the easiest cover win there is.
Ventilation: the feature that saves the furniture
Here is the part people discover the hard way. The biggest threat to covered furniture is not rain getting in. It is moisture that cannot get out. Ground moisture rises, humid air condenses and a sealed cover holds it all against your furniture for months. The result is mould on cushions and frames that were spotless when covered.
Two habits and one feature prevent it. The feature is air vents, which let the space under the cover breathe while still keeping rain out. Treat vents as essential rather than nice to have. The first habit is never covering wet furniture, so give everything a dry day before it goes under wraps. The second is lifting the cover on a dry day every month or so to let the whole setting air out. If you are in Victoria, Tasmania or South Australia, where the damp hangs around for months rather than days, our guide to protecting an outdoor dining table through a wet winter goes further into ventilation and timber care.
Cushions deserve their own decision. The gold standard is storing them indoors or in a deck box and covering only the frames. If cushions must stay out under the cover, stand them on edge so any moisture drains, and check them more often.
Wind: strapped down or gone
Any cover worth buying has some way of holding on. Look for buckle straps that clip under the furniture, drawstring or elastic hems, or weighted corners. In exposed spots, use all of them. An unsecured cover in a front will either sail off down the yard or stay put and sandpaper your furniture's finish for hours.
Fabric matters here too. Look for covers in woven polyester or similar with a waterproof coating and UV stabilisation, since the cover itself sits in the sun all day on your furniture's behalf. Dark covers hide grime. Light covers run cooler underneath. Both work.
A cover that fits well, breathes and stays put will quietly add years to a setting's life for a very small outlay. You will find shaped and sized options in our outdoor furniture covers range, along with the broader cushions and covers collection. And if you are covering a lounge you are still in the process of choosing, our outdoor lounge settings pages list full dimensions to measure against.
