Indoor-outdoor garden furniture: the outdoor living trend from Chelsea Flower Show 2025
Outdoor living took centre stage at RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2025. Across the gardens, seating areas were styled as sitting rooms, blending homely indoor aesthetics with outdoor spaces that embraced the natural world.
From the ‘lived-in’ sofa (perfect for canine cuddles) in Monty Don’s dog garden; to the relaxed family-friendly sectional in the ‘Save for a Rainy Day’ show garden; to the cosy characterful chairs on the ‘Space to Read’ balcony, it was clear that garden seating should be as comfortable and as personal as your favourite room inside.
Armadillo Sun’s cushioned sunlounger is a perfect fit with this year’s Chelsea trend for indoor comfort outdoors. More chaise lounge than sunlounger, it was loved by visitors to our Chelsea stand. Exuding comfort and luxury but designed from high-performance materials to resist the elements, it’s practical and durable too.
Get the Chelsea look: 8 outdoor living ideas for garden seating that feels like indoors
Have you been inspired by RHS Chelsea 2025? Bring the interior aesthetic to your patio or outdoor seating area with these 8 design ideas.
1. Choose outdoor furniture in luxury fabric (that's truly weatherproof)
For really comfortable garden seating, fabric outdoor furniture is unbeatable. After all, you’d be unlikely to choose metal or plastic or concrete for seating in your living room!
But the fabric needs to be luxe and tactile, not the stiff, shiny finish associated with traditional outdoor fabrics.
The best fabric for patio furniture is soft, inviting, and available in a wide range of colours and designs. It is designed as much for indoors, as for out.
Modern outdoor fabric furniture is available in a wide range of colours and woven patterns that look at home indoors, as well as out. The weatherproof garden cushions at Armadillo Sun include woven jacquard designs with the soft tactile handfeel you'd expect from indoor cushions, but they do not bleach or rot.
The outdoor fabric we use at Armadillo Sun draws on the latest material technology and is incredibly weatherproof – in fact it’s the domestic version of fabric approved for use by the marine industry! It’s colour fast and won’t rot in the rain.
With climate resilience being another significant theme at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show, outdoor furniture that is up to the challenge of both high UV and high rainfall is essential.
2. Play with vertical space
World-renowned interior designer, Abigail Ahern, talks often about drawing the eye upward within a room to create drama.
Without walls to work with, everything in a patio seating area can end up on the same level – the planting, the furniture, the pots. This feels flat and bland, with none of the cosy appeal of a well-designed interior.
When you are planning your outdoor seating, don’t overlook vertical space. Adding height gives your garden room that spatial variation that’s so central to inviting interiors.
The gold-medal winning Killick & Co 'Save for a Rainy Day' garden at RHS Chelsea 2025 created a family seating area under a pergola that was 3D-printed on-site (a first for Chelsea!). The oak beams suspended in the stone arch become an outdoor ceiling, delineating the social space from the wilder areas of the garden. The beams (which are actually bespoke troughs) also act as a water capture device, directing rainfall into a designated 'flood zone'. Image credit: RHS
You can create a focus on vertical space with an outdoor ‘ceiling’: a pergola, an arch, or a large overhead structure, as illustrated so brilliantly in the Chelsea Pensioners' Garden at Chelsea Flower Show 2025. Or create a green living roof with trained trees, as seen in my 8 steps to a cosy garden. Even a tree in a large pot invites in a different scale!
Playing with height is another reason I love Armadillo Sun garden bean bags. By design bean bags sit you lower and change your viewpoint. A bean bag nestled amongst strategically placed pots of wafty grasses and fragrant foliage is a clever way to embrace the outdoors, whilst creating the intimate, cosy nook you’d associate more with indoors.
Choosing garden bean bags for outdoor seating enhances the sense of height of surrounding foliage to create the feeling of indoor cosiness.
3. Avoid 'matchy-matchy' with eclectic style
Today’s interior trends embrace a glorious mish-mash of old and new; natural and contemporary.
Whilst indoors we’d be unlikely to fill a room with furniture pieces in the same style and finish, it’s often the path we’re led down outdoors.
Patio seating need not be ‘matchy-matchy’. Instead, add garden furniture in a variety of materials and styles, dependent on the function you want that seating to hold (and what you like!)
Seating opportunities within the Avanade Intelligent Garden at RHS Chelsea 2025 featured log stumps alongside concrete blocks, more commonly seen as traffic control (they were rented from a road maintenance company for £5!). Image credit: Neil Hepworth
You could set a relaxed, comfortable spot with bean bags and a low table, against a more structured, formal table and chairs for outdoor dining. A weathered wooden bench – or even some log stumps – can be a perch for morning coffee in the sunshine.
I make bespoke cushions for benches, and other seating, should you wish to use colour and fabric as a cohesive thread across different furniture pieces.
4. Bring in the curves
A significant indoor trend of the last few years is furniture with curved edges that promote a feeling of comfort and ease. In contrast, outdoor furniture is often boxy and square.
However, at Chelsea Flower Show 2025, the curved benches of the Down’s Syndrome Scotland Garden and the sculptural seating of the Garden of Compassion for Hospice UK stood out as talking points.
The 'Together Benches' in the Hospice UK Garden of Compassion are made from reclaimed oak, steamed into gentle undulating shapes. Image credit: RHS
Add curves into your outdoor space by choosing a round outdoor table: it will offer visual variety on a rectangular patio and is an efficient use of space in smaller gardens. Round hanging egg chairs also make an inviting spot to unwind.
I designed bespoke outdoor cushions for this curved hanging egg chair for a customer who was fed up with outdoor cushions that got soggy and went mouldy. The round shape is cosy and inviting amongst the dramatic tropical foliage, and made even more so by the deep cushions that look soft enough for indoors, but will not rot in the wet!
I love the soft edges of Armadillo Sun outdoor sofas. With their unique bean filling, they have a less structured appearance (although they are just as supportive to sit on) and fit beautifully into the wilder, naturalistic planting we’re all adopting in our gardens.
The modular sofa chairs we make at Armadillo Sun are filled with premium rainproof beans that give them a delightfully comfortable squish – and make them perfect for fitting into corners of your outdoor seating space. Being light and easy to move, they are also a clever solution to furnishing awkward spaces indoors.
5. Layers upon layers of texture
When we plant up our borders, we’re encouraged to think about the texture and contrast of foliage: feathery ferns against a blocky brunnera leaf, perhaps with something wafty in between. Texture is your friend for interest and depth, so why not apply the same thinking to your outdoor seating?
Whilst indoors there is a plethora of luxe plush fabrics to choose from, outdoors can feel flat when you want something tactile and inviting.
However, modern outdoor fabrics have vastly increased their offering with ranges that include basketweave, herringbone, and even bouclé.
The designer outdoor cushions we recently added to our range are perfect for layering indoor homeliness onto your outdoor set-up.
Outdoor cushions in a woven waffle fabric bring warmth and cosiness to a garden sofa or patio chair – bringing living room comfort to your outdoor set-up.
6. Accessorise to elevate your outdoor space
A sofa without a cushion. A side table without a book. A room without a lamp or a rug. There are unlikely finds inside the house. After all, it’s the little details that make a space feel like home!
Accessories add soul and encourage the eye to linger as it takes in a space. If you aren't able to read a room in a second it is, by definition, more engaging.
Adopting the same approach to your patio is a subtle, but essential, element of turning a garden seating space into an outdoor living-room.
Dress a table or bench with flowers, terracotta pots, outdoor lamps or candles. Enjoy adding colour and pattern with cushions on your garden sofa.
Outdoor seating can have a shallow seating depth, which doesn’t lend itself to accessorising with cushions. This is one reason why I designed a generous 65cm depth of seat to our outdoor sofa chairs – you can really lean back into them and there’s space for plenty of cushions!
7. Apply 'broken plan' design to your patio
In interior design, broken plan uses semi-barriers (like kitchen islands) to maintain the fluidity of an open-plan layout, but with useful zoning and delineation of space.
When you have a large patio it can feel overwhelming – and quite impersonal. Rather than placing furniture in a ring around the edge – or pushing a sofa into the middle – where it can feel lost, consider dividing the space up and creating zones. Each with a particular function in mind. Not only will this build ‘rooms’ into your outdoor space to reflect your home, but will make it more versatile, fulfilling a wider range of functions.
Dividing up your outdoor space does not make it feel smaller, it creates a sense of spaciousness, but with more intimate and cosy spots. This approach can still be applied within a small outdoor space where it will help to make a garden look bigger.
Gentle partitions outdoors could be wafty planting, or an arrangement of pots, or even just the way a modular garden sofa is laid out.
A wooden screen and water feature help to zone this patio and create the perfect spot for a cup of tea and a book outdoors!
8. Bring in your personality - always!
Individualism, with a mix of styles and vintage pieces that reflect your personality, has been an interior trend for a few years now.
Your style and personality do not stop at the patio doors! Whether it’s a piece from your travels or an insight into your passions let your outdoor space tell your story.
The theme of Chelsea Flower Show 2025 was ‘your space, your story’, focusing on the individuality of people’s gardens. An outdoor space that feels like home is the ultimate goal.
At this year’s Chelsea Flower Show, our designs in Calypso Orange fabric (bean bags and cushions) were a standout favourite – I love how people chose something vibrant and joyous.
The gardens at Chelsea this year reminded us that outdoor spaces should be every bit as thoughtful, expressive, and welcoming as our interiors. Whether you’re layering textures, mixing styles, or curating a cosy corner just for you, your patio seating can be as comfortable, and as reflective of your style, as your indoor sofa.
If you’d like help creating your own indoor-outdoor sanctuary, I’d love to chat. Please give me a call or come and visit us for a warm welcome at our Kent showroom.
And if colour is calling you, don’t miss my guide to adding vibrant outdoor furniture to your garden.