Coastal Garden Style: Designing a Relaxed Seaside Patio with Nardi

There is a particular kind of light on the Irish coast. It arrives washed and silvery off the water, softened by salt haze, and it has a way of flattening colour into something calm and a little bit dreamy. Anyone who has stood on a patio in Dungarvan, Lahinch or Rosslare on a bright breezy morning knows the feeling: the sky and the sea trading blues, the marram grass leaning in the wind, everything a shade cooler and more relaxed than it would be inland. Coastal garden style is really just an attempt to bottle that feeling and keep it on your terrace all season long.

The good news is that you do not need to live with a sea view to capture it. Coastal style is a mood before it is a location. It is about restraint, texture and a colour palette borrowed from the shoreline, and it works just as beautifully in a suburban Cork garden or a Dublin courtyard as it does in a clifftop cottage. In this guide I want to walk you through how to build that relaxed seaside look properly, from the colours on your chairs to the way you lay out the space so the breeze can move through it. And because the Irish weather is not gentle on furniture, I will lean heavily on Nardi, the Italian outdoor specialists whose weatherproof pieces are, frankly, made for exactly this climate.

What Coastal Garden Style Actually Means

Let us clear something up first, because “coastal” gets thrown around a lot and it can mean anything from a nautical pub with rope and lifebuoys nailed to the wall to a bleached, minimalist Hamptons deck. The version I am talking about, and the one that suits Irish homes best, sits somewhere gentler in the middle. It is understated, breezy and a bit weathered in the nicest sense. Think faded blues, soft whites, sage and sea greens, natural timber and rope, linen that ripples in the wind, and plenty of empty air so the whole thing can breathe.

The mistake people make is treating coastal as a theme to be applied with props. You do not need anchors and steering wheels. You need a considered palette, a few honest materials and furniture that looks like it belongs beside water. When it is done well, a coastal garden feels like exhaling. It is the opposite of a fussy, over-decorated space. Everything has room, everything is a little muted, and the eye relaxes.

Three principles hold the whole look together, and I will keep returning to them throughout this guide. First, a disciplined colour palette drawn from the shoreline. Second, layered natural textures that add warmth and stop the space feeling cold. Third, a breezy, open layout that lets light and air pass through. Get those right and the styling almost takes care of itself.

The Coastal Colour Palette: Blues, Whites and Sea Greens

Colour is where coastal style lives or dies, so this is worth slowing down for. The shoreline gives us a naturally harmonious palette because everything out there has been softened by weather and light. Nothing is saturated or loud. The blues are hazy, the greens are grey-tinged, the whites are chalky rather than brilliant. When you translate that to a garden, the trick is to choose colours that feel sun-bleached and slightly faded, never primary or glossy.

Here is the palette I build coastal Irish gardens around, and helpfully these map almost exactly onto Nardi’s own colour range, which makes specifying furniture straightforward.

• Bianco (soft white): the anchor of the whole scheme. A warm, chalky white that reads like sea foam and painted clapboard rather than clinical bathroom tile.
• Celeste (pale sky blue): the heart of the coastal look. A gentle, powdery blue that echoes a hazy summer sky and calm shallow water.
• Salice (willow green): a soft, silvery sage that behaves like a neutral. It nods to dune grass and coastal planting and stops a blue-and-white scheme feeling too cold.
• Agave (muted sea green): a deeper, dusky green named after the succulent. It grounds the palette and adds a little maritime depth.
• Natural tones (timber, rope, linen, sand): the warm neutrals that tie everything together, from pale oak decking to jute rugs and sandy stone.

The reason this palette works is that it is analogous. Blues, greens and off-whites sit close together on the colour wheel, so they blend rather than clash, exactly the way sky, sea and sand do in real life. You are not trying to create contrast and drama here. You are trying to create calm. When in doubt, take the saturation down and let the natural tones do the warming.

Leading with Celeste

If you only take one colour cue from this whole article, make it Celeste. That powdery sky blue is the single most evocative shade for coastal style, and it is the fastest way to signal “seaside” without a single literal nautical prop. I love it on a dining chair because it lifts an otherwise neutral table setting into something that instantly feels like a holiday.

The Nardi Riva Outdoor Chair in Celeste is a lovely place to start. Its clean, slightly retro silhouette has just enough curve to feel soft rather than severe, and in that pale blue it looks like it has always lived by the water. Pull four or six of them around a pale table and you have the bones of a coastal dining scene in one move. Riva also comes in Bianco, Tortora and Agave, so you can mix a couple of blues with a couple of greens around the same table for that gently collected, not-too-matched look that suits the style.

Grounding with white and sage

White does the heavy lifting in a coastal palette, but it needs to be the right white. You want warmth, a hint of chalk, something that reads as painted timber or sea foam. Nardi’s Bianco has exactly that quality, and paired with Salice green it creates the calm, dune-grass freshness that is so characteristic of the look.

The Nardi Net Chair is a brilliant workhorse here. Available in Bianco and the soft Salice green among its range, its distinctive perforated shell has an airy, almost woven quality that suits a breezy patio down to the ground. Those little openings catch the coastal light and throw gentle shadows, and they let the wind pass straight through rather than catching it like a solid seat. Group a few Net chairs in white with one or two in Salice and you get that easy tonal layering the palette is built on.

Layering Texture: Rope, Timber and Linen

A coastal palette on its own can tip into cold if you are not careful, especially under a grey Irish sky. Texture is the antidote. The seaside is full of tactile, natural materials that have been shaped by weather, and bringing those into the garden is what gives the look its warmth and its soul. This is the layer that turns a colour scheme into an atmosphere.

Think in terms of three texture families and try to include all of them. Rope and woven fibres bring a handmade, maritime quality, whether that is a jute rug underfoot, a rope-detailed lantern or the woven look of certain chair shells. Timber and rattan bring warmth and organic grain, from decking boards to a driftwood-toned bench or a slatted table top. And soft furnishings in linen and cotton, in stripes and solids, bring the movement and comfort that make a space feel lived in. Linen in particular is the coastal fabric; it creases, it billows, it looks better a little rumpled, which is exactly the relaxed spirit you are after.

The Nardi Net Relax Chair is a lovely bridge between colour and texture. It carries that same perforated, mesh-like shell as the Net dining chair but in a reclined lounge form, and it comes in coastal-friendly shades including Salice and Bianco alongside warmer corals and mustards. The visual texture of all those tiny openings means the chair already reads as tactile before you add a single cushion. Dress it with a linen throw and a rope-handled side lantern and you have a corner that begs to be sat in with a book and a cup of tea.

Bringing in warm timber tones

Every coastal scheme needs a hit of honest wood to stop the blues and whites floating away. Even a small amount, a slatted table, a timber bench, a run of decking, grounds the palette and adds that beachy, sun-warmed feeling. If your hard landscaping is stone or concrete, a rug in a natural weave will do a similar job of warming the floor.

The Nardi Folio Outdoor Armchair has a gorgeous slatted, folded profile that gives you that ribbed, timber-like texture without the maintenance of real wood. In Agave it reads as a deep, dusky sea green that pairs beautifully with pale decking and chalky white walls, and its generous armchair proportions make it a natural choice for the relaxed end of the patio. Folio also comes in Bianco, Tortora and Tabacco, so you can push it warmer or cooler depending on how much timber you already have in the space.

Furniture Built for Salt Air and Irish Weather

Here is where coastal style gets practical, because the seaside is a genuinely hostile environment for furniture. Salt-laden air corrodes metal and degrades cheap plastics. UV light, even filtered through Irish cloud, fades colours over a season or two. Wind flings furniture around, and our rain does not so much fall as arrive horizontally. If you invest in the look but not in the durability, you will be replacing it within a couple of summers.

This is exactly why I specify Nardi so consistently for coastal projects, and it is worth understanding why the brand is so well suited to it. Nardi is a family-run Italian company based in the Vicenza region, and they have been making outdoor furniture for decades with a real focus on materials science. Their pieces are made from fibreglass-reinforced resin, a polypropylene that is engineered to be tough, lightweight and dimensionally stable. Crucially, that resin is UV-stabilised, so the colours are formulated to resist fading in sunlight rather than simply being painted on. And because there is no metal frame to rust in the core resin pieces, salt air simply cannot corrode them the way it attacks aluminium or steel.

There is a sustainability angle too that fits the honest, natural spirit of coastal style. Nardi’s resins are fully recyclable, and the company has invested heavily in its ReGen range, which uses regenerated material reclaimed from industrial production. So the furniture that helps you evoke the sea is also designed not to end up as waste in it. For a look that is fundamentally about respecting the natural landscape, that matters.

In practical terms this means Nardi furniture can live outdoors all year in an Irish coastal garden. It will not rust, it shrugs off salt and rain, it does not need covering and storing every night, and a rinse with fresh water is genuinely all the maintenance it asks for. That freedom, being able to just leave it out and use it, is a huge part of what makes a garden feel relaxed rather than precious.

The Nardi Costa Outdoor Chair is a perfect illustration of clever coastal thinking. It is light enough to move easily when the wind gets up, it stacks neatly for when you need to clear the deck ahead of a storm, and it comes in Bianco and Agave for the palette as well as neutral Tortora and Antracite. A stack of white Costa chairs tucked against a wall is both practical and, honestly, quite a handsome bit of styling in its own right. This is furniture that works with the coastal climate rather than fighting it.

Breezy Layouts: Designing for Air and Light

The word that keeps coming up with coastal style is “breezy,” and it is not just about colour. It is a layout instruction. A coastal patio should feel open, uncluttered and connected to the sky, with room for air and light and people to move through freely. Cramming in furniture, however lovely, kills the effect instantly.

Start by leaving space. Resist the urge to fill every corner. Negative space is a design element here, not wasted room; it is what makes the eye relax and the space feel calm. Pull furniture slightly away from walls where you can, keep pathways generous, and let a bit of the ground plane, the decking or paving or gravel, show through. A coastal garden should feel a little bit like a beach: open, low and horizontal.

Keep sightlines low and long. Coastal style favours pieces that sit low and lean, echoing the flat line of the horizon. Low loungers, slim-profile chairs and modest table heights all reinforce that restful, reclining mood. Avoid tall, blocky furniture that interrupts the view and the flow of air. And orient your seating towards the best of the light or the view, even if that view is just an open patch of sky or a well-planted border rather than the actual sea.

For the lounging heart of the garden, the Nardi Komodo 5 Multi-Layout Outdoor Lounger is a wonderful anchor. As a modular system it can be reconfigured into different layouts, an L-shape tucked into a corner, a long low run facing the light, or two facing benches for conversation, which means you can shape it around the way the breeze and the sun actually move through your space. Its low, generous proportions are exactly the horizontal, relaxed silhouette coastal style calls for. Dress it in cushions in soft white and pale blue, add a couple of linen scatter cushions, and it becomes the place everyone gravitates to.

Zoning without walls

A breezy layout still benefits from gentle zones: somewhere to dine, somewhere to lounge, somewhere to catch the last of the evening sun. The coastal way to zone is soft and open, using rugs, planting and the arrangement of furniture rather than solid dividers that block the air. An outdoor rug in a natural weave under the dining set quietly says “this is the table,” while a cluster of grasses in pots can suggest the edge of a lounging area without walling it off.

The Nardi Cube 80 Outdoor Table is a smart, unfussy centrepiece for a dining zone. Its clean cubic form in Bianco keeps things visually quiet, so the colour and character can come from the chairs around it, and at 80cm square it seats four comfortably without dominating a smaller patio. It even has a handy storage cavity under the top, useful for tucking away cushions or a folded linen cloth when the weather turns. Pair it with Celeste Riva chairs or white Net chairs and you have a complete, breezy little dining zone that leaves plenty of room to move around it.

The Lounging Corner: Slow Coastal Living

If dining is the social heart of a coastal garden, the lounging corner is its soul. This is where the relaxed seaside feeling really pays off, in a chair you can sink into with the sun on your face and nowhere in particular to be. Coastal style is fundamentally about slowing down, and your furniture choices should encourage exactly that.

The Nardi Doga Relax Chair in Agave is one of my favourite pieces for this. That gently reclined seat and those soft, ribbed lines invite you to settle in, and the dusky sea-green Agave finish looks wonderful against pale stone or timber. It is the kind of chair you put in the spot that gets the four o’clock sun, with a linen cushion and a little side table within arm’s reach. Doga Relax also comes in Bianco and a whole spectrum of muted tones, so you could run a pair in Agave and Bianco side by side for that easy tonal pairing.

For full-on horizontal relaxation, the Nardi Plano Outdoor Sun Lounger is hard to beat. Its long, low reclining form is the very essence of that flat coastal horizon, and in white it practically glows in summer light. Whether you have an actual pool, a hot tub or simply a sunny stretch of decking, a Plano lounger, or better a pair with a low table between them, turns a corner of the garden into a proper suntrap retreat. Add a rolled linen cushion and you have created the single most relaxing spot in the house, and it happens to be outdoors.

Bistro Moments and Smaller Spaces

Not every coastal garden is a sprawling terrace. Plenty of Irish coastal homes have compact courtyards, balconies or narrow side returns, and the good news is that coastal style actually suits small spaces beautifully. The pale palette makes a little area feel bigger and brighter, and a single well-chosen bistro setting can deliver the whole mood in a couple of square metres.

The Nardi Trill Bistrot Chair is made for exactly this. It is a folding chair, so it stows flat against a wall when you need the floor space, and it comes in a genuinely lovely spread of colours including Bianco, Agave and the soft grey-blue Grigio that all sit comfortably in a coastal scheme. Two Trill chairs and a small round table in a corner of a courtyard, with a pot of lavender or a clump of grass alongside, is all you need for morning coffee that feels like a seaside holiday. Because it folds and it is weatherproof, it is also the ideal “extra chairs” solution for when friends arrive, stored in a shed and pulled out at a moment’s notice.

In small spaces especially, discipline pays off. Stick tightly to two or three colours from the palette, keep the furniture low and light, and let one or two natural textures, a jute mat, a timber shelf, do the warming. Resist the temptation to add lots of little decorative objects; in a compact coastal space, calm and emptiness are luxuries.

Finishing Touches: Light, Softness and Scent

Furniture and colour set the stage, but it is the small final layers that make a coastal garden feel genuinely inhabited and magical, particularly as the evening draws in. The Irish summer gives us wonderfully long twilights, and a coastal patio comes into its own in that soft, late light.

Lighting should be warm, low and gentle, never bright and floodlit. Think of the glow from a beach house window at dusk. Cluster a few lanterns at different heights, run some warm-white festoon lighting along a fence or between posts, and add a portable table lamp or two for pools of intimate light on the table. Rechargeable outdoor lamps are a brilliant modern solution because they let you place light exactly where the mood needs it, with no cables to spoil the breezy, uncluttered look.

Something like the Securit Angelina Table Lamp is exactly the kind of portable, rechargeable light that transforms an evening. Cordless and easy to move, a couple of these dotted along a dining table or a low wall throw a soft, warm pool of light that makes people linger long after the sun has gone. In a pack of six they are also a smart buy for anyone who entertains, or for a hospitality setting, letting you light a whole terrace consistently.

Beyond light, lean into softness and scent to complete the picture. Layer in linen and cotton cushions and throws in your palette, mixing solids with the odd stripe, and do not be afraid to let them look relaxed and a little crumpled. For planting, reach for the coastal classics that thrive in Irish gardens and reinforce the mood: silvery grasses that catch the wind, lavender and rosemary for scent, sea holly, hebes, and anything with that grey-green, salt-tolerant foliage. Grasses are particularly worth it because they bring movement, that gentle rippling in the breeze that is the very essence of a seaside feeling.

A quick coastal styling checklist

• Anchor the scheme in soft white (Bianco) and build up with Celeste blue, Salice and Agave greens.
• Include all three texture families: rope or woven fibre, warm timber or rattan, and soft linen.
• Keep the layout open and low, leaving generous negative space for air and light to move.
• Choose weatherproof furniture that can live outdoors year-round in salt air, so the space stays relaxed and low-maintenance.
• Zone softly with rugs and planting rather than solid dividers.
• Finish with warm, low, portable lighting and plenty of wind-catching grasses.

Putting It All Together

Let me sketch how these ideas come together in a real Irish garden, because the pieces are more than the sum of their parts. Picture a modest rear patio, pale sandstone paving, a rendered wall painted soft white, an open sky overhead. Along one edge, a Cube 80 table in Bianco with four Riva chairs in Celeste makes the dining zone, sitting on a natural-weave outdoor rug that quietly frames the space. The chairs’ powdery blue is the first thing your eye lands on, and it does all the coastal signalling you need.

Across the patio, angled to catch the afternoon sun, sits a small lounging corner: a Doga Relax chair in Agave and a Net Relax chair in Salice, a low timber side table between them, both dressed with rumpled linen cushions in white and pale blue. A cluster of tall grasses in a weathered pot marks the edge of the zone and rustles whenever the wind picks up. Against the far wall, a couple of folded Trill Bistrot chairs in Bianco wait to be pulled out when friends drop by, and a stack of white Costa chairs does the same. As the light goes golden and then blue, two Angelina lamps come on across the table and along the wall, and the whole garden settles into that warm, glowing, end-of-a-good-day feeling.

Nothing in that scene is loud. Nothing is fighting for attention. The palette is tight, the textures are natural, the layout breathes, and every piece of furniture can be left out to face whatever the Atlantic throws at it. That is coastal garden style done properly: not a costume, but a calm, considered, salt-air-ready way of living outdoors that works whether you can see the sea or only imagine it.

The beauty of building this look around Nardi is that the durability is baked in, so the relaxed feeling never has to be interrupted by worry. You choose your blues and greens and whites, you lay the space out to breathe, you add your rope and timber and linen, and then you simply enjoy it, season after season, rinse and repeat, quite literally. If you would like to start pulling your own coastal scheme together, have a browse through the full Nardi collection and see which shades of the shoreline speak to you.