The Different Types of Sun Lounger Designs

Starting with one of my personal favourite sun lounger designs is the reclining sun lounger design – these are the sun loungers that have adjustable backs and can be sat in different positions. There could be as little as just two reclining positions in this sun lounger design, or there could be five (like our Master Sun Loungers!). Reclining sun lounger designs can still vary among themselves in terms of how they recline, for example some will recline through using the arm rests to slide it up and down, some will use a little more manual work to unhook and hook in, and some may be a two-handed job to slot a bar into different positions.

The reclining sun lounger design is a great advantage because no matter what you’re wanting to do, you can easily adjust the back to lay flat, soak up the rays and get some shut eye, leave it half way for a relaxing position but comfortable enough to get through a few chapters in your book, or sitting upright to sip away at some cocktails and demolish your favourite holiday food. The more reclining positions a sun lounger has, the more flexibility you’ve got so it’s always handy to choose one with plenty of reclining ability, but if you know you only need to lay flat or sit upright then there’s no need for the extra criteria. For example, our Resol Palamos Sun Lounger reclines to three positions; flat, upright and somewhere in between!

Ideal sun lounger designs will vary from person to person, it’s just as much a personal choice as choosing your living room furniture - in fact, your garden (if that’s where it is going) is just an extension of your home so you shouldn’t treat your outdoor furniture any different – and we all know you wouldn’t have just bought any sofa or dining room table!

The sun lounger design that’s ideal for frequent beach goers, picnic lovers, or those that always spend the summer in a friend’s garden, is the portable sun lounger design. This is exactly wat it’s called, sun loungers that can easily be taken anywhere with you. The Folding Canvas Beach Lounger is a prime example of this sun lounger design; a lightweight canvas lounger that can easily be thrown on your back or in your beach bag without hassle and taken down to your favourite beach spot.

Portable sun loungers don’t even have to be used as a sun lounger at all times, the portable sun lounger design is super useful as any form of seating when you are going out for the day, perhaps camping, or spending the day at the country park. This sun lounger design, to be so lightweight and easily transportable, will usually be made from lightweight materials, for example canvas, but it doesn’t mean they have to lack any of the other sun lounger design features. Take our Folding Canvas Beach Lounger, it folds away, is portable, and even has an adjustable bar on the back to recline into different positions.

Some may argue that deck chairs are a portable sun lounger design – for they allow you to lounge in the sun on a canvas material, and they’re often lightweight enough to carry around. This would mean our metal beach chairs could fall under this sun lounger design too.

The portable sun lounger design doesn’t have to mean particularly light weight for carrying, it could have wheels like our Resol Palamos Sun Lounger, to easily be moved around without leaving the floor. This sun lounger design may come with the ability to remove the wheels when stationary if you prefer the look or simply don’t need them – Resol Master.

You’ll most likely find the portable sun lounger design will be the same as the folding sun lounger design, because usually if something is foldable it will be easily portable and vice versa. However, this isn’t always the case, our Sussex Garden Sun Loungers fold down but are still not as easy as the canvas sun loungers to transport.

Often, the folding sun lounger design is for space saving purposes. Whether you have a sun lounger for home use, or you’re a hotel with a whole host of sun loungers, you want them to take up as little space as possible when in storage (especially as it probably stays in storage longer than it’s out for!). This sun lounger design can also vary among themselves, as we briefly just touched on. Some sun loungers of this design will be able to fold away completely while others will fold partly, perhaps the back folds over to the bed or the end of the sun lounger folds up to the rest – either way, the folding sun lounger design is great to save space or if you’re storing more than one.

Another super handy sun lounger design for those storing multiple sun loungers, whether at home or in a professional setting, is the stacking sun lounger design. Being able to compactly stack sun loungers, one on top of the other can be a real advantage, especially in smaller spaces, where they will take up less than even half the space.

Our Master 5 Position Sun Loungers were designed in a stackable shape for great space saving in the off season, as were our Marina 4 Position Canvas Sun Loungers. The stacking sun lounger design may mean it’s not foldable, nor particularly portable, as they’ll often be a solid shape like our polypropylene ones to allow for multiple to sit on top of one another and bare the weight. This emphasises that everyone will have their own ideal sun lounger designs because it depends on what you want from your sun lounger, how much space you have storage and where you want to take it.

This is the sun lounger design that is truly nostalgic of holidays with your family when you were younger; you’d wake up super early to grab your family some sun loungers and choose the best spot around the pool – but if you were too earl, they’d still be stacked up from the night before and you’d have to wait for someone to come and unstack them!

Lastly, another sun lounger design to keep in mind when you’re researching, and shopping is what we’ll call the functional sun lounger design. By this, we mean sun loungers with extra add ons – features other than foldability, portability, and stack ability.

Our Master Sun Loungers from Resol are a great example of the functional sun lounger design with the built-in drinks holder and even a phone holder. Revolutionising! Trying to balance your drink on the sand, or your cocktail glass on the concrete floor is always a risk and losing your phone among your towel and you is always frustrating, but with this type of sun lounger design your drink and phone will be perfectly safe and at arms reach beside you. If you’re not one to nap under the sun or simply lay and relax, perhaps this sun lounger design is for you, allowing you to easily respond to messages, slurp up cocktails, and quickly grab your phone camera when you need to snap a funny photo.

The Marina Canvas Sun Loungers also feature an in-built drinks holder, saving you the hassle of finding and cost of buying a side table for your garden set up.

Another functional aspect we can claim under the functional sun lounger design is from our Canvas Sun Lounger. This design has a storage pocket so you can keep your belongings out of eye sight and away from great heat – and away from the annoying ability for sand to get into everything!

Our Resol Palamos 3 Position Sun Lounger is our best-selling comprehensive sun lounger design. I call it comprehensive because it has three separate reclining positions for your flexibility and comfort and the rear wheels allow for easy manoeuvring when you need to chase the sun around the garden. Developed by garden specialists Resol, it has been manufactured in the EU for European conditions, and thus, the injected polypropylene construction is durable enough to resist the unpredictability of British summertime.

The Harbour Housewares Folding Canvas Beach Lounger is also a popular product from our collection and is the sun lounger we mentioned at the very start of this guide. The sun lounger design here ticks the box of portable, folding and reclining so there’s no wonder as to why it’s a best-seller! The high-quality canvas material is lightweight, durable, and long-lasting so perfect for day trip after day trip and on the beach or at the park.

Another popular product from our sun lounger collection is the Master 5 Position Sun Loungers – Pack of 2. Available in green, grey, and white, you can choose the colour that suits your summer garden set up. 5 reclining positions and an in-built phone and cup holder makes this sun lounger design super handy for relaxing in the garden, by the pool or at the beach, and another great feature, is the optional wheels under the back legs to be easily moved around. Plus, these Master loungers are stackable, and you can get all these benefits on two sun loungers for £161.99 and free delivery right to your home.