Teak Furniture That Survives Every Season

Teak grade descriptions below are quoted from published timber industry guidance read in early November 2026. The yield arithmetic is ours, drawn from those published proportions. No specific product has been tested by us.

Teak is sold on one promise, which is that you can leave it outside and forget about it. For a certain kind of teak that promise is true and has been true for centuries. For most of what is sold with the word teak on the label, it is not.

The difference is not the species. It is which part of the tree the board came from, and published grading guidance sets that out clearly enough to be useful in a shop.

What the grades actually mean

Grade A is heartwood from the centre of a fully mature log. It is high in the natural oils that resist weather and insects, uniform golden brown, close grained, and slightly oily to the touch. Published guidance describes its outdoor resistance as outstanding.

Grade B comes from the outer heartwood and carries only traces of those oils. It is lighter, less even in grain and duller, and published guidance says it cannot withstand outdoor extremes without treatment, and even treated it lasts far less long.

Grade C is sapwood from the outer log and timber from immature trees, with virtually no oil. Published guidance calls it unsuitable even for indoor furniture and gives it a very short outdoor life regardless of coatings or oiling.

The number that changes how you shop

Here is the detail worth carrying into a showroom. Published guidance puts Grade A at roughly a fifth to a quarter of a log, and Grade B at about a quarter to a third.

Run that arithmetic against the market. If only 20% to 25% of harvested teak can be Grade A, then an industry in which most garden furniture is advertised as Grade A teak is describing more Grade A than the trees produce. The maths does not work, and that is before anyone mentions price.

Published guidance also notes that some Grade B and C furniture is chemically darkened to resemble Grade A, and that the difference is usually only visible with the two side by side. So colour alone is not evidence of grade, which removes the one test most buyers rely on.

How to read a listing

1. Look for the words heartwood and mature, not just the word teak. Species alone tells you nothing about which part of the log you are getting.
2. Feel it if you can. Grade A teak is described as faintly oily and close grained, and sapwood is neither.
3. Treat an unusually low price as information rather than luck, since real Grade A teak furniture is a minority of a limited yield and is priced accordingly.
4. Be wary of a uniform dark colour on cheap pieces, given that darkening is a known way of imitating the higher grade.

Living with it once it is yours

Left outside, teak goes from gold to silver grey as the surface weathers. This is cosmetic rather than structural, and it is the look most people associate with old teak. Oiling returns the colour and has to be repeated, so it is a preference and a commitment rather than maintenance.

What genuinely matters is airflow underneath and not sitting in standing water all winter. Teak furniture on a flat terrace that pools water will suffer at the feet first, whatever grade it is.

The honest position

If the budget allows genuinely documented Grade A teak, it is one of the few outdoor materials that justifies its price over decades and asks almost nothing in return.

If it does not, the better choice is usually to buy something else honestly than to buy a lower grade sold as a higher one. Powder-coated aluminium will not age beautifully, but it will not quietly fail in year three either.

Teak grade definitions, oil content, log proportions, durability descriptions and the note on chemical darkening are quoted from published timber industry guidance read in early November 2026. The yield percentages applied to the market are our own calculation from those published proportions. Weathering and care notes are general practice rather than tested findings.