One showroom in Melbourne. Delivery across Australia.

The showroom is in St Kilda and the warehouse is at Hallam, so this is the one part of the country where a piece can be seen, sat in and compared before it is chosen. Inner-Melbourne terraces and courtyards are mostly sheltered sites with hard summer UV and a real winter — the specification question here is usually shade and comfort rather than corrosion, and dark powder-coat surfaces get genuinely hot in late afternoon sun.

• St Kilda
• South Yarra
• Toorak
• Armadale
• Richmond
• Hawthorn
• Kew
• Albert Park

Port Phillip is sheltered water, but it is still salt water and an onshore southwesterly carries it inland several streets. This is the classic case for the middle of the exposure ladder: quality powder-coated aluminium and teak both do well, stainless fixings are worth specifying and cost almost nothing at order time, and a rinse every few weeks does the rest.

• Brighton
• Hampton
• Sandringham
• Black Rock
• Beaumaris
• Mordialloc
• Williamstown

The Peninsula is two coasts at once, and a specification that ignores which one it is on will disappoint somebody. A front-beach terrace on the Port Phillip side is sheltered bay exposure; a back-beach house on the Bass Strait side at Portsea, Sorrento or Blairgowrie is open ocean, with spray, sand and the strongest wind loading in the state. The same house often has both, which is exactly the case for specifying by area rather than by property.

• Portsea
• Sorrento
• Blairgowrie
• Rye
• Dromana
• Mount Martha
• Mornington
• Flinders

Open Bass Strait exposure with very little between the terrace and the weather. Torquay through to Lorne takes the full southwesterly; Queenscliff and Barwon Heads sit at the mouth of the bay and get both. This is the top of the ladder — teak, marine-grade coated metal and stainless fixings, with shade that can be closed and anchored rather than left up.

• Torquay
• Anglesea
• Lorne
• Apollo Bay
• Barwon Heads
• Ocean Grove
• Queenscliff

The Gippsland Lakes are an estuarine system — brackish, sheltered, and much milder on metal than an ocean frontage, which is why Metung and Paynesville terraces can take specifications that would not survive at Inverloch or on the Phillip Island south coast a short drive away. Worth being honest about which of the two you have.

• Metung
• Paynesville
• Lakes Entrance
• Inverloch
• Cowes
• Phillip Island
• San Remo

No salt at all, and a different problem instead: frost, a wide day-to-night swing, and long periods where furniture sits unused under trees. Timber and coated metal both do well; the things that suffer are cushions left out season-round and anything that traps water.

• Healesville
• Yarra Glen
• Woodend
• Macedon
• Kyneton
• Daylesford
• Bright

Harbour frontage is sheltered water with constant salt, and the ocean side a few streets away is not sheltered at all. Both of Casualife’s published golf-club references are in this city, and members’ clubs here set the hardest version of the problem: heavy public use, salt, and furniture that has to still look right on a competition day.

• Point Piper
• Vaucluse
• Double Bay
• Rose Bay
• Bondi
• Mosman
• Manly
• Cronulla

Full ocean exposure from Palm Beach down, and the northern rivers around Byron add heat and humidity to the salt. This is the country where plated fixings fail inside a season and where the difference between an ordinary stainless and a marine grade shows up as brown staining on an otherwise sound piece.

• Palm Beach
• Whale Beach
• Avalon Beach
• Newport
• Mona Vale
• Terrigal
• Byron Bay
• Jervis Bay

Inland, cold in winter, and dominated by garden and cellar-door settings rather than terraces. Salt is a non-issue; what matters is furniture that can stay out under trees, take frost, and be moved and stacked for events.

• Bowral
• Moss Vale
• Mittagong
• Pokolbin
• Mudgee
• Orange

Subtropical: the highest UV load of any market on this list, humidity that never really lets fabric dry, and canal frontage on the Gold Coast that puts brackish water under the terrace as well as salt in the air. Fabric and cushion choice matters more here than anywhere else in the country, and a re-cover cycle should be assumed rather than resented.

• Ascot
• New Farm
• Main Beach
• Sanctuary Cove
• Burleigh Heads
• Noosa Heads
• Mooloolaba
• Port Douglas

The western suburbs face the Indian Ocean and take a hard sea breeze most summer afternoons — an exposure that is as much a wind problem as a salt one, and the reason unweighted furniture and unanchored shade do not survive here. Crown Perth is on the company’s published reference list. South-west, Margaret River and Dunsborough add long unattended periods to the same coastal exposure.

• Cottesloe
• Peppermint Grove
• Claremont
• Dalkeith
• City Beach
• Fremantle
• Margaret River
• Dunsborough

Hot, dry summers and a gulf coast that is milder on metal than an ocean frontage. The wine regions inland are garden and cellar-door settings — long tables, stacking chairs, shade that has to come down between events.

• North Adelaide
• Medindie
• Toorak Gardens
• Unley Park
• Glenelg
• Henley Beach
• McLaren Vale

Three conditions with nothing in common. Canberra is inland and frosts hard, so salt is irrelevant and cold is not. Hobart is cool but carries a serious UV load and an estuarine waterfront. Darwin is tropical, cyclone country, with a wet season that decides what can be left standing at all.

• Forrest
• Yarralumla
• Deakin
• Kingston
• Battery Point
• Sandy Bay
• Launceston
• Cullen Bay