The Flexform sofa bed question

The indoor catalogue includes sofa beds. They are built the way Italian sofa beds usually are: a folding steel frame under the seat, a thin sprung mattress, and a sofa around it that is meant to look like a sofa rather than like furniture with a secret.

None of that construction goes outside. A folding steel mechanism in the weather seizes, and a sprung mattress left in the rain is ruined the first time it gets wet through.

The outdoor range answers the same need with daybeds. A daybed is a fixed surface at seat height or a little below it, with the same waterproof construction as the seating: marine plywood, polyurethane foam, a breathable laminate that keeps water out of the foam, and covers that come off.

For an afternoon it works better than a sofa bed does. For an overnight guest it does not replace a bed, and no honest dealer will tell you otherwise. What it replaces is the sun lounger, and it does that far better, because it is furniture rather than pool equipment.

Then it belongs indoors, and it is an indoor Flexform order rather than something from this catalogue. We can quote it, but it is a different conversation and a different construction, and it will not live on a terrace.