French bistro patio chair materials, from bamboo-look aluminum to plain resin

A French bistro chair announces itself from across the street: a slim back, a little curve, a seat that looks woven. It is the chair people picture when they say sidewalk cafe. Then the first hot Saturday arrives, and the picture has to survive a warm curb, a rinse hose and a closing crew with forty more chairs to carry.

In our catalog the bistro look comes in a handful of materials. Most are aluminum frames finished to resemble bamboo, topped with a woven seat in faux rattan. A few are plain metal frames with the same weave. Resin and steel chairs can play the part too, in plainer dress. This piece sets them side by side on the points that matter outside: the frame, the seat, the width, the weight and the table underneath.

The frame is the part that stays out in the rain

Start with aluminum, because it carries most of the range. A bamboo-look aluminum chair with a faux rattan seat is 18 1/8 inches across and 20 7/8 deep, weighs 7 pounds, stacks, and lists a 500-pound capacity. The same frame comes as a bistro armchair at 10 pounds and 21 7/8 inches wide. Aluminum does not rust, and that is why it holds the bistro catalog together.

Two chairs in the range list their frame only as metal. A brown metal chair with a faux rattan seat weighs 12 pounds and lists a 400-pound capacity, and the page doesn't say whether the metal is aluminum or steel. Ask a specialist before you order a dozen. If it turns out to be steel, treat it like any coated steel: it rusts where the coating chips, so look it over at every reopening.

Weight splits the range in a way the photos never show. A 7-pound chair is a gift to the closing crew and a toy for a gust. The 14-pound aluminum armchair with a cherry finish does the opposite, and it is listed for patio use only. Resin and steel sit on the same scale: the cross-back resin chair is 8 pounds and the steel ladder-back chair is 14, and neither has a weave. Pick the weight that matches your worst corner, then browse the rest of the French bistro chairs with that number in mind. The usage-line rules behind every pick are in our outdoor buying guide.

The weave is synthetic, and that is the point

Natural cane and rattan are indoor materials. They don't care for standing water, and weather finishes them quickly. The faux rattan on a patio chair is a synthetic weave, the version made for outside. If you've been shopping real cane for the dining room, our cane chair piece covers that side, and the cane chairs page is where indoor weaves live. Keep the two apart. An indoor cane chair on a patio is the classic way to spend good money on a chair that lasts one wet spring.

A woven seat holds grit in its gaps, so give it a hard rinse rather than a wipe alone. Dark weaves take in more of the afternoon than pale ones, which is worth a thought before you buy twenty seats in black and cream for a south-facing curb; our notes on patio furniture in direct sun show how to test it. Patio chairs carry a six-month warranty period, and furniture left uncared for falls outside it.

Arms cost you inches

Here is the arithmetic that decides a bistro layout. Plan on roughly 24 inches of tabletop edge for each diner, and 18 inches at the very tightest. An armless bistro chair is 18 1/8 inches wide. The armchair is 21 7/8. Along a table where guests sit shoulder to shoulder, the armless chair leaves 5 7/8 inches between neighbors at 24 inches a head. The armchair leaves 2 1/8. At the tight 18, even the armless chair overshoots its slot by a hair, and the armchair by 3 7/8 inches.

So take a 48-inch side. Two armless chairs use 36 1/4 inches and leave 11 3/4. Two armchairs use 43 3/4 and leave 4 1/4, which is where elbows start to meet.

The same chairs at a 24-inch two-top lose nothing, because each guest owns a whole side of the table. That gives you the rule of thumb: arms where guests linger, armless where you need the room.

Give each chair a spot on the sidewalk

Walk the strip from the door to the curb. Near the door, where servers cut through, the 7-pound armless chair is easy to nudge aside and easy to restack. At the corner table where couples linger, the armchair has room to spread. Along the curb, where the breeze and the foot traffic arrive first, the 14-pound armchair is the harder one to push around, and its patio-only listing costs you nothing out there.

A bistro table is a base and a top

The look is half table. A French-style patio table set with two chairs comes in five table sizes, from 24 inches square up to 30 inches square or round, with three rattan pairings and a 22 by 22 inch base. The arithmetic is short again. Centered, a 24-inch square top overhangs that base by 1 inch on each side. A 30-inch round top overhangs it by 4, and the 22-inch spread is 73 percent of the diameter, comfortably past the two-thirds minimum.

A 24-inch square seats two, and so does a 30-inch square with room for the plates. Choose the larger top when guests order food; choose the smaller when they order coffee and a pastry and you need the room on the sidewalk. The full run of patio tables offers rounds, squares and rectangles if the set's sizes don't fit your curb.

Eight pieces and a swatch

Ask for metal finish swatches on the samples page before you pick a frame color, then set them on the sidewalk at 4 PM. Frame finishes in the bistro range run from natural and walnut to cherry, brown and black, and a color that looks warm in a photograph can look flat in a hard afternoon.

Our minimum is 8 pieces of tables and chairs, any mix. A first corner of three two-tops is three tables and six chairs, which makes nine and clears it. Save the corner in a patio plan with a note on the weave color and the arm count. When you're adding chairs to a patio you already have, get a fresh swatch first. Color lists change over time, and a weave pairing you bought two years ago may have left the list. Confirm the color before the order, not after the pallet arrives.

Then tape three 24-inch squares to your sidewalk, set a pair of chairs at each, and watch a Saturday of strollers go by before you press order.