Luxury Outdoor Design & Furniture Trends

Finding luxury, traditional outdoor furniture that suits a classic property such as an English country house, a Tuscan hill top villa or a coastal property in the south of France can be difficult. These wonderful properties, built at a time when wealthy patrons could build where and how they wished, were not conceived on today’s minimalist lines. They were built with grandeur inspired by the buildings of the Greeks and Romans where embellishment and intricate detail were important. Finding luxury outdoor furniture to suit hotels or private residences in these wonderful properties is challenging if looking through catalogue of most manufacturers. The vast majority of today’s outdoor furniture all looks the same, minimalist, simple clean lines and beige.

Oxley’s have always made metal outdoor furniture for classic properties with the same ethos with which those properties were built. These properties were built to last and have stood the test of time. We always describe our furniture as generational, to be handed down and admired for generations.

So how do we get the inspiration for our traditional outdoor furniture? As the architects that built these properties did, we go far back into ancient times, but we go further than the Greeks and Romans. We are inspired by the visions of ancient inhabitants of the British Isles from up to 5,500 years ago.

The influences on our lives are so different today than ever in our recent past. We have so much visual stimulus hitting our senses from every angle throughout the day, so much more even than our parent’s generations and many times more than before the invention of electricity. Where did those designers of the ancient times get their ideas? All around them they had the chaos of nature but it seems mankind wants order and all ancient societies came up with the symmetrical patterns which still fascinate us.

Our current bestselling design, Scroll, is inspired by the Celtic knot whose province in uncertain but was widely replicated by the Celtic peoples of the ancient British Isles.

In 2024 we will be releasing a our new design, Petrosphere. This will be another Oxley’s luxury design outdoor furniture set built with opulence from the fascination with tactile symmetrical objects.

The Petrosphere is a spherical carving primarily made by the Neolithic peoples of northeast Scotland. These round stone balls were carved in difference patterns which were always symmetrical. No one knows why these people spent the countless hours carving these balls. Were they used in the process of moving large rocks on sleds? Or as weapons to throw? We will never know, but what is extraordinary is the quantity of these objects that have been found in architectural digs. We have incorporated this feature into our new range of furniture.

Ancient people wanted to harness nature with their designs. Oxley’s are inspired by these designs and use them to harness nature in our own way, by making traditional, generational and sustainable furniture unaffected by the elements. furniture to last a lifetime.