Hi, Houzzers... time to dream of spring and decks already (!) We're embarking on a deck renovation and I thought I'd ask about our furniture choices -- not in terms of style, but in terms of size. We've sat on all the chairs and seen all the tables in person, so we would love to just get this stuff, but I'm concerned about a few of the dimensions.

Here are some renderings that our architects have done of the proposed deck space. (Some details have already changed, but this will give you the gist.)

The renderings show a generic set of lounge chairs and a generic dining set. Unlike these renderings, however, we plan to use two lounge chairs with an ottoman in between under the pergola, day-to-day, to encourage more use of the deck. That layout would look like this --

I’m wondering whether or not this layout will feel comfortable. I’ve left about 9” between the ottoman and each of the lounge chairs. Since I have a lounge chair inside the house to play with, I can report that this is probably a good distance. But it concerns me that there’s just 22” behind the chairs, between the back of the chair and the edge of the railing (or the interior of the wind chimes, on the other end). That’s not even the (minimal) 24” usually recommended for passageways, let alone the 30” I think most people agree would be needed for comfortable passage.

On the other hand, do we care?? Is anybody really going behind these chairs, other than to sweep/blow leaves off the deck?

We have a somewhat reasonable 3’4” between the edge of the dining table and the wall of the house, which leaves enough room for someone to scoot their chair back comfortably. And when someone’s coming out from the house up toward our hillside (which has a fire pit), I suppose there’s enough passageway—particularly if the chairs are scooted up to the table, as would usually be the case—to get out that direction easily. But what do you think? Is that table in the way?

In terms of the table... we are considering buying an extendable table so that we could seat 10 in a pinch under the pergola, in case of a party. That layout looks like this:

Here the lounge chairs look great (in the corner)… but is the dining table too tight under that pergola? We’ve got just 30” between the edge of the (extended) table and the edge of the railing (or edge of table and wind chimes on the other end). Will that feel too tight? This table does manage to get 10 people seated for a nice gathering… and I guess if it’s slightly tight, people will deal with it. (That’s what folks do at a gathering!) But I suppose if it’s just not a good idea, we could buy a table that just seats 6-8 and call it a day. The table we're considering comes in 3 sizes, luckily.

If anyone's interested, I can bore you with photos of the actual lounge chairs, light fixture, dining table/chairs, etc. but here it's the dimensions that I'd like to focus on. We have what I've always called a "Not-So-Big" house (that follows the philosophy of Sarah Susanka), so we're used to taking advantage of every inch. Have we taken that too far, here, or will it work? All thoughts welcome!