The biggest issue with having a grass patio is that the chairs, tables, etc. all have to be moved when the grass gets mowed. How big a deal this is depends entirely on how heavy the chairs are. So my cast iron chairs are on a paved surface, but the cedar ones live on grass. The cedar ones are also the ones I usually sit in.

Pea gravel is not the proper gravel to use if one wants paving. It's round and clean, therefore doesn't pack down but squishes away underfoot. Furniture legs would sink into it. Instead of pea gravel, why not use gravel that IS suitable for paving? Such a gravel is small pieces (like pea gravel) but in a non-rounded, crunchy shape, plus smaller chips, bits, sand and dust of the same material. In combination, they settle and lock together. When tamped, they can become hard enough to bounce a basketball on, which could never be done with pea gravel.

A grass patio isn't fun to use when it's wet, you have to move furniture to mow (as stated above), and god help you if you have a fidgeter (I would have a bare spot under my seat in about three hours).

Of all the gravels I like the look of pea gravel the best. If you do an inch or so of pea gravel over a compacted base of 21a/ABC/crusher run, it's very solid and walkable, but it's still a rounded stone. The more use the patio sees, the more it'll migrate. As Yard mentioned above, an angular stone stays put better. Here we used #8 chip gravel at a VERY busy winery (lots of foot traffic) and there's very little migration into the beds or lawn areas.

In your circumstance, I'd build the patio on a base of 6 inches compacted crusher run, then an inch of your decorative aggregate. An advantage of this is that down the road if budget allows, the decorative aggregate and a little of the crusher run can be scraped off and the patio converted to dry-laid flagstone. That's how we did our patio, because our 100 year old home still needs a new kitchen and a new downstairs bathroom and a new boiler and... yeah don't buy old homes unless you're independently wealthy. Anyhow that's my .02

Thanks so much for the advice. I don’t plan to use any permant furniture on the grass patio. We would use butterfly chairs and fold them up and put them away in the garage when not in use. Mowing isn’t a concern with the chairs.

My interest in pea gravel stems from wanting to be barefoot on the patio. Any of the crushed packing gravel is sharp and uncomfortable to walk on. A friend had a path of pea gravel that she didn’t mind walking barefoot on. Adding several inches of chipped gravel to compact it and place pea gravel on top gets me halfway to a paver patio. Great suggestion. I hadn’t considered that option.

It seems I have a lot to consider here.

" Any of the crushed packing gravel is sharp and uncomfortable to walk on. " I don't think this is the case. Pea gravel has a different discomfort. If the angular gravel is fine enough & packed smooth, it's not painful to bare feet. Imagine walking on something the the size of aquarium gravel that is packed smooth. A very sandy "gravel."