Most outdoor cushions look fine in a shop and disappointing by August. The fabric fades, the fill goes flat, the covers start to feel damp even on dry days. We have spent enough summers rescuing sad seating with indoor cushions that were never meant to be outside to know exactly what the problem is. Outdoor cushions need to work harder than their indoor equivalents and most of them simply do not.

What we have pulled together here are cushions that survive actual British garden life. That means fabrics that hold their colour through rain and direct sun, fills that bounce back rather than compress into nothing, and covers that dry out quickly rather than staying suspiciously soggy. We have also thought about layering, which is how outdoor seating goes from serviceable to genuinely inviting. Scale matters. Texture matters. Mixing a larger lumbar with a couple of smaller squares changes the whole feel of a bench or a sofa. These are the ones that make it worth sitting outside.