Marine inspiration and new craftsmanship. The latest in outdoor furnishing straight from the Salone del Mobile 2026

Natural materials, organic forms and generous volumes inviting relaxation, sophisticated details that delicately enrich the designs - the garden and outdoor furnishing seen at the Salone del Mobile.Milano speak for themselves, but don’t scream out. Mediterranean atmospheres and references  to the sea, with its sunny islands and slow-paced life and its typical architecture, which some of the collections draw on explicitly, while others allude to them more subtly through a play of references and quotations. The ancient art of weaving, previously hugely popular at the 2025 edition, is reproposed in a large number of different variations, from the most traditional to highly technical reinterpretations. The distinction between indoor and outdoor continues to be blurred, with gardens, patios, swimming pools and terraces seen as a natural extension of the living room, continuing the discourse begun there and rounding it off. 

In this context, the well-known Lago brand has extended beyond the home to take its first steps into outdoor furnishing, with a range specially designed for outside space. Some products, such as the Air Outdoor table and the Mezz’aria Outdoor table, revisit indoor icons with different materials and techniques. The Air Stone sofa is an entirely new project, however, with bases resembling stones washed smooth by the sea and designed to allow rain to run off without pooling, and backrests that can be positioned at will. An integrated lighting system underneath the seats helps to create the impression of a hanging structure, along with the visual lightness of the glass legs.  

At Emu, the Antigua collection designed by Federica Biasi, with its distinctive hallmark weave, has expanded to include a recliner and a table seating up to eight people, along with chairs and armchairs. Like the sofa presented last year, the new seats also feature a light new generation synthetic rope weave  that doesn’t conceal the aluminium frame, but caresses and enhances it. The shapes are soft and enveloping, inspired by the movement of ocean waves.  

The London studio Barber Osgerby, currently the focus of a 30-year retrospective at Triennale Milano, has designed a collection for Dedon in which the art of weaving is central, even as far as its name goes - Tricot, a word used in both French and English to describe knitting. The modules that make it up are hand-woven using a special circular-section fibre that lends itself to bold, continuous curves, in a blend of craftsmanship and technologically advanced industrial manufacturing.   

“Over the course of history, the shape of the arch has defined many different architectural styles,” said José A. Gandía-Blasco Canales, inspiring structures such as the Roman aqueducts and bridges with semicircular spans since ancient times,  and which still characterise the landscape of the  countries overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. It was with these images in mind that he designed the  Arco sofas and armchairs for the family firm, Gandiablasco, with perforated semicircular aluminium sheet backrests, revisiting the traditional grille pattern by placing it in a contemporary context.