Outdoor wood furniture continuously faces temperature variations, humidity, rain, sunlight, wind, and many other outdoor elements all over the year.
As a result that, outdoor furniture tends to crack, scratch, discolor and ruin quickly than indoor wood furniture.
When I was making my expensive first outdoor patio furniture set, I was afraid of ruining it because of outdoor elements. So, I have researched How to protect Outdoor Wood Furniture from Elements?
Here is what I know by experience of making outdoor furniture for years:
Outdoor wood furniture can protect from elements by painting, sealing, varnishing, changing locations to minimize exposure to elements, waterproofing, covering, and many more. By preparing outdoor wood furniture for specific weather conditions and elements they’ll be protected to lengthen their lifespan. Otherwise, outdoor furniture will damage easily by rotting or facing discoloration within few months.
But that’s a quick snapshot. There is a lot more you need to know about protecting outdoor wood furniture from elements.
So, in this article, I’m mainly focused on How to protect outdoor furniture from various elements, such as from sun, rain, wind, moisture, what are the best treatments you can follow to protect outdoor furniture to expand their lifetime with the best sealers, available in the market as well.
How Do You Protect Wood from Outdoor Elements?
There are several methods you can use to protect the wood from outdoor elements. Such as,
Painting the furniture
Sealing the furniture
Varnishing the furniture
Changing the location of the furniture
Covering
Keep the furniture clean
1. Painting Wood Furniture for Outdoor Use
Using paint is a great option to get strong protection from outside elements for your loving wood furniture. Paint has the ability to block the sunlight from getting into the surface of the wood.
Also, paint can block UV and protect the wood underneath from discoloration and many other problems.
In my opinion, latex paint gives better last long protection for outdoor furniture than regular oil-based paints. Latex paints are used as cosmetic fixes and are easy to apply.
Latex paints have massive varieties of colors and hide scratches. A good layer of paint will give better protection from outdoor elements the water and UV radiation.
Even after applying paint, you need to check whether your wood has scratches, dents, peelings, fading once for a few months, and reapply the paint all over the surface.
So, let’s talk about how sealing outdoor wood furniture helps to protect it from elements.
2. Sealing Outdoor Wood Furniture
Sealing is pretty much useful if you live in an area that receives a lot of rain. By applying sealer your outdoor wood furniture will protect from water.
Most of the time outdoor furniture ruin because of moisture and rain. Water molecules easily penetrate inside of the wood and cause a lot of trouble.
By applying water sealant, the natural look of the wood will never go away like applying paint. Water sealant is transparent and does not change the color of the wood like any other protector.
Never leave any part of your wood furniture unfinished. Seal underneath, joints, and even the bottom of the legs to fill all the cracks.
This will avoid the rotting, splitting, and warping of the wood.
The popular sealants you can use for this task are,
Polyurethane sealant
Lacquer
As you can see sealing outdoor wood furniture gives better overall protection without ruining the natural look of the wood.
3. Varnishing The Furniture for Outdoor Use
Varnishing is also considered as a type of sealing but there is a lot more to specialize about varnishing.
By varnishing the furniture you’ll be able to protect outdoor wood furniture from moisture because it has water resistance.
Varnish is known as the best alternative option you can go with rather than sealing or painting. Varnish won’t change the color of your wood furniture and keep it natural.
The varnish layer can absorb UV rays which is one of the main attacks for wood and its appearance. By absorbing UV, varnish gives protection to the wood furniture from sun damage.
This will prevent discoloration of the wood and increase its lifetime.