For the past few months, I’ve been working on a contemporary beach house on the South Shore.  The home has multiple levels with concrete surfaces, wood surfaces, and many walls of glass facing the seascape.  It was mostly a blank slate for interpretation except for an iconic harvest table and the surrounding Windsor chairs. Observing the sunlight moving along the walls, it became apparent that the solutions for this seasonal house would require materials resistant to solar destruction.  For fabrics, that means acrylics.  For furniture, that means teak and hularo.  And for soft flooring, that means tactesse.

You may have noticed an explosion of outdoor fabric choices this season.  “Canadian House and Home” featured several choices and prices in their “Outdoor Living” issue, May 2004.  In case you missed that issue, you can see many of those fabrics on a manufacturer’s website, www.sunbrella.com.  The website also features the requisite cleaning and maintenance instructions for extended fabric life.   There are a multitude of price ranges and designer styles to explore.  In fact, many of the other fabric showrooms like Kravet feature their own exclusive designs on Sunbrella fabrics.  On their website, www.kravet.com, go to “find a product”, check “outdoor” and press “go”.  You’ll see 116 fabrics from plain to stripes to flora to Laura Ashley toile.  For the beach house, I used a Perennials fabric (www.perennialsfabrics.com).  Perennials features mostly stripes and Asian graphics.  The stripe patterns distinctly resemble the beach “changing” tents fabrics from the old Hollywood movies—classic!  With the aqua and tan “jake” stripe used as floor-to-ceiling drapery, the sunroom views of sea grass and surf are framed with long-lasting style.   

The furniture for this beach house sunroom must also withstand the solar exposure.  The temporary tomato red sectional from Pottery Barn is already showing streaks of pink after one year of exposure.  Not to worry, a fantastic wall-to-wall sectional will be arriving from Dedon that will be able to withstand years of South Shore sunlight.  The Dedon line hails from Germany (www.dedon.de).  All of the furniture is made from “hularo” (www.hularo.com), a man-made fibre impervious to weather down to –20C, impervious to saltwater, impervious to suntan lotion and wine.  It’s excellent for the outdoors and problem-free in a sunroom.  There are lots of styles ranging from Caribbean to Californian.  Take a look.  Dedon is not the only company using this product.  Check out the new looks from Gloster (www.gloster.com) combining teak and hularo.  If you’re looking for long-lasting furniture beyond the teak and mahogany look, then hularo might be an option.