How to Arrange Porch Furniture

Featured Pro: Carter Oosterhouse
Category: Home Décor
Time: 4:17


CARTER OOSTERHOUSE: You know, the front porch of your home is really important for curb appeal, and it can also be an enjoyable place to relax. But that’s only if you set it up right.

I’m Carter Oosterhouse, and this is your next GMC Trade Secret, courtesy of the GMC Acadia.

The area surrounding your front door might be small in square footage, but it is huge in terms of what it says about your home. Now, for a lot of people, your front porch is a blank slate that can be decorated in a lot of different ways. But the first step to decorating your porch is really choosing the furniture and where it goes.

Now, scale and balance is extremely important. So one thing I suggest is use painter’s tape to plan out the placement of your furniture before you actually go buy it and get a feel for how much room it’s actually going to take up.

Now, since we said scale and balance, I know I want to have two chairs, one on either side of the door. But before we go buy the chairs, I actually want to place the painter’s tape down. And since we only have about five feet, I’m thinking about eating up a third of that five feet. So what I’ll do, take our painter’s tape and start placing it down. All right.

Now, the beauty about the painter’s tape is that you can have as many configurations that you want, and really you don’t have to spend a dime. So now I have my two chairs set up. It doesn’t look quite right. I’m going to change it up. All right.

So now that I have my painter’s tape down, I really feel like we have nice balance on our front porch. And since we have all this traditional molding and these louvered panels, let’s go ahead and get some traditional furniture.

All right. So now we have made the front porch extremely inviting. All the neighbors are going to see. But at the same time, it’s really balanced and sized well. You can see we have the conversational area over here with the table and two smaller chairs, so they’re not real heavy and bulky on that side. And then we have the rocker on this side, which is rather large, but it really anchors that side of the porch.

Well, we know this looks really well and it fits really well, and the size is perfect. But what if we don’t like this style? Well, let’s go with a different look.

Now, when you’re adding furniture, think about adding a chandelier, because obviously it looks great from the road, but you’ll get a lot of good mood lighting out on your porch.

Now, let’s talk about the furniture down here. We still kept with the whole traditional style, but the chairs are a lot bigger, a lot weightier. They’re still extremely functional, and they’re a lot more comfortable.

Now, these are my personal favorite, just because the colors are a little bit more muted and they really work well with the color of the door and the color of the house. Now, your furniture, it has to be functional and weather-resistant, because interior furniture, it won’t last if you leave it out in the elements. So find a furniture scheme that works with your style of your home, and don’t be afraid to dress up your porch.

I’m Carter Oosterhouse, and that’s your GMC Trade Secret.