Hands-On Review: SunHaven Parker Collection Patio Furniture

We recently got one of SunHaven's new patio furniture sets, the aluminum Parker collection. Read our initial reactions to this awesome set!

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We recently got a new furniture set from SunHaven for our backyard, and we are so excited to share our thoughts and reactions with you!

If you have read any of our posts on our site, you will find that SunHaven is one of our favorite direct-to-consumer outdoor furniture brands. From its growth over the past few years, it’s easy to see that it’s becoming a very popular brand that customers are turning to.

If you are in the market for some new patio furniture and considering a set from SunHaven, read below for our hands-on review of its newest Parker Collection to see how it might be perfect for you too!

Our new Parker Collection furniture set:

Image of our SunHaven Parker collection setup on our patio.

Our new patio furniture is the 11-Piece Large Sofa Set from SunHaven from its Parker Collection (Buy it here!) and the 12-Piece Dakota Outdoor Décor Kit (Buy it here!). Here’s what we got in this furniture set and décor kit:

Furniture:

  • 2 modular sofas (more on this modular feature later)
  • 2 club chairs
  • 2 ottomans
  • 1 coffee table

Décor:

  • 3 large throw pillows
  • 3 medium throw pillows
  • 3 lumbar throw pillows
  • 2 throw blankets
  • 6’ x 9’ outdoor rug

Parker 11 Piece Large Sofa Set

Parker 11 Piece Large Sofa Set

Dakota 12 Piece Decor Kit

Dakota 12 Pc Outdoor Decor Kit

SunHaven Overview:

Before we get into the details of our hands-on review of the Parker Collection from SunHaven, let us quickly recap a few things that make SunHaven an overall 5-star brand by our rankings from our detailed review on this company:

  • High-quality frame materials (HDPE, aluminum, eucalyptus)
  • High-quality fabric (Sunbrella and Olefin)
  • High-quality cushions (>5″ thick high-density foam wrapped in batting)
  • No / very little assembly
  • Free shipping and delivery
  • Great prices compared to peers for similar furniture

Our Hands-On Review

Now, finally, we get to our initial reactions to our first few weeks of using our new SunHaven patio furniture set! Here are the areas that we cover in this review:

  • Shipping and Delivery
  • Setting Up and Assembly
  • Configuration
  • Style
  • Comfort
  • Weather Resistance

Shipping and Delivery

Summary: Easy and pain-free shipping and delivery experience. The delivery company had great communication and had the full furniture set to our house two weeks after we ordered it.

SunHaven Parket Collection by the Pool

If you have ever ordered any large item for your home (refrigerator, furniture, appliances, etc.), you instantly know right away the pain and discomfort that shipping and delivery can be (I am sure there is a mental image in your head right now as you think about that previous nightmare of an experience). We’ve been there, and trust me, and we have the battle scars to prove it. 

I can honestly write that our shipping and delivery experience for this furniture was super easy and pain-free. I kid you not. 

A week after we placed our order, we received a call from the shipping company (we talked to a real person!) with an estimated delivery date of about a week to two weeks out. We were actually leaving town during this timeframe, so we got a little worried, but they assured us that it’s standard to have a follow-up call when they had a better date after the furniture arrived at their distribution facility. This first call was then followed up with an email from the company confirming this information and giving us additional contact information. So far, we were giving this process high marks (it worked around our hectic schedule and was painless).

A few days later, we received a call, a text, and an email (it’s almost like they were using WUPHF) with a new delivery date that was earlier than the initial time window (a huge plus), and this worked around our travel schedule. 

The delivery truck arrived in the specified window, and they quickly unloaded all the boxes into our garage. We could have had to place them in our backyard, but since we were going out of town, we decided to put them in the garage until we were ready to set up the furniture. It was nice to have such a flexible delivery agent that catered to our needs.

Additionally, we found that the boxes were also damage-free and appeared to be handled well throughout the shipping and delivery process, meaning that our furniture would be in good condition when we would unpack it later – it’s never fun to have to return ANYTHING, especially furniture if you can’t unpack it right away (like our case). 

Overall, the process was very quick and efficient, and we were very surprised and thankful for the great communication and performance on the delivery company’s part.

Setting Up and Assembly

Summary: SunHaven fully lives up to its claim of having no to very little assembly of its furniture. Moving the boxes to our patio and getting our furniture fully set up was super simple. In total, l it took about 30 minutes to get everything out of the boxes and our furniture perfectly placed. We don’t think you can have a much easier or faster assembly experience than what we had with this set from SunHaven. 

Side note: I am in no way a bodybuilder or strong by any means, and the process made me feel like I could take on the world by the end of it!

As stated above, we had the boxes of our patio furniture placed in our garage because we were not ready to set up the furniture when they delivered it due to leaving town for a few days. We have done this with other items before when we first moved into our home, and the main challenge that this brings is getting the items to fit through our doors. I call this the Game of Tetris from hell. 

You more than likely can relate to this, and you have probably had to put boxes at weird angles to get it through a door (and probably pulled a muscle or two). When all else fails, you then have to start unpacking it in the garage or somewhere else (or take the item apart!) and then carry it piece by piece to where it belongs.

Luckily, all of the boxes fit perfectly through our door frames, some more snug than others, but they all fit. We have very standard doors and doorframes, so I would be very shocked if these boxes couldn’t fit in any doorframe. 

This made moving the boxes to our backyard much easier than having to haul the boxes all the way around our house, through gates and narrow parts of our fence line, by our pool, and eventually to our patio. (Talk about a disaster/Urgent Care visit waiting to happen). Like I mentioned before, I believe women are strong, don’t get me wrong, but I am strong in ways other than lifting (maybe you can relate), and I had zero issues moving these boxes to our backyard.

Boxes of our SunHaven Parker collection patio furniture.
Boxes of our SunHaven Parker Collection Patio Furniture

A big selling point for SunHaven is that there is no (or very little assembly) to its patio furniture. I’ll be honest; I was hesitant about this claim. Many patio furniture brands will claim this to some degree, and the term “little assembly” has now become a very relative term. What some furniture brands claim as “little assembly” turns into a long, drawn-out process with tools and screws everywhere.

From our hands-on experience, we were genuinely impressed with the assembly experience with this SunHaven set. There was as little assembly as you could possibly expect from setting up patio furniture. It was amazing, and I have to say, and very gratifying.

The patio seating furniture frames are one solid piece, meaning that there were no screws or pieces to attach to get the sofas or chairs ready to go. Now you might think it would be hard to get these solid pieces out of the box, but these lightweight aluminum frames were super easy to lift out of the box and place on our patio. Like I said before, I am no bodybuilder, and I felt like Super Woman lifting these out of the box and very easily placing them where I wanted.

The only assembly, if you can even call it that, for the sofas and chairs was putting the cushions on the seating frames, but that was easy (and to me, the most exciting part). I usually patiently wait for my husband to finish constructing something in order to do that final finishing piece, but with this set-up process, I got to skip straight to my favorite part! 

The one and only piece that did require some assembly was the coffee table, which required screwing in the legs to the table. If you have conquered an IKEA set in your life or any similar furniture item, you won’t have a problem with this. Assembling this was a breeze and only took about 5 minutes.

The set-up was so simple and quick. The most time-consuming part was just removing the items from the packaging. In all, it took the two of us about 30 minutes (!) to get this set (which is a rather large set) fully removed from the boxes and fully set up on our patio. That gets really high marks in our ratings, and we don’t think it will be easy to beat that. 

Configuration

Summary: This SunHaven set is very lightweight, and it is very easy to move around. The modularity of this set is a feature that we overlooked, but it’s something we have really come to love because we can easily convert and move this furniture set to fit our needs for different occasions.

First off, we really want to highlight how lightweight this set is. We believe this is truly one of the best features of this set. We have owned and used quite a few types of outdoor furniture made with different types of materials like wrought iron, steel, various kinds of wood, wicker, plastic, aluminum, etc., so we are familiar with how easy or hard it can be to move different patio furniture pieces. 

What has really stood out to us about this Parker SunHaven set is just how lightweight this furniture is and how easy it is to move. I mentioned above how easy it was to unbox and move the furniture around to where we wanted to set it up. We were honestly shocked at how light this furniture was. We have had metal furniture before, especially aluminum furniture like this set is made from, but it was nowhere near as light.

Another huge selling point, in my opinion, of this patio furniture set from SunHaven, is that this furniture is modular. We honestly didn’t realize how huge of an impact the modularity of this furniture would have initially because we’ve always been the type of “furniture buyers” that once something is set up, it’s staying put – no moving, no shifting, it’s in the spot we want it & it’s going to stay there.

So, obviously, we would never give the modularity aspect a second thought, but oh, how we were wrong. 

After we set up the furniture as we expected (two sofas, two chairs, and two ottomans), we started to play around with seating configurations. We turned the sofas into an L-shaped sectional. Then we created three loveseats. Then we moved items around our patio and pool and discovered a TON of ways that I had never imagined.

Before this set, I never really thought about having different configurations of our patio furniture if we had a pool party, outdoor cookout, game night, etc., because if you can’t easily move it, what good is it to think about different configurations? 

That has changed with this SunHaven set. It has gotten a little addicting (in a good way) moving the furniture depending on the occasion. It almost feels like a brand-new outdoor space each time I come up with a new arrangement.

To sum it up, we found many configurations that we love and found that the modularity of this SunHaven Parker patio furniture set is a great feature.

Our SunHaven Parker Collection patio furniture set up with two main sofas.
Two Sofa Configuration
Our SunHaven Parker Collection Patio furniture set up as a sectional.
Sectional Configuration
Our SunHaven Parker Collection patio furniture set up in loveseats.
Three Loveseat Configuration (one loveseat is slightly out of picture)
Our SunHaven Parker Collection patio furniture poolside.
It is very easy to move our furniture poolside if we need to

Style

Summary: I loved the look of the furniture set when we made the purchase, and I was blown away by how good this black metal and gray cushioned set looks in our backyard. The complete real-life look of this set has exceeded my expectations.

Complete honesty here: I was a bit anxious about how this set would look in our backyard. More often than not, I feel that I am completely convinced of how something will look when making a purchase (we all have online shopped and have been blindsided when something arrives, am I right?). Even though I loved the look of the set, I was more anxious than normal.

And here’s why… our backyard (fence, brick, and pool stone) has more browns and tans, and before getting this set, we had a brown/tan all-weather wicker outdoor sectional that we really loved, and we thought fit really well with the colors and style of our backyard.

So, going to a black metal and gray cushion patio set was almost a 180 in my book. So, while I loved the look of this set and hoped it would look great in our backyard, I was definitely anxious to see how it all blended in real life.

When we finished setting up the furniture, my husband and I were honestly shocked at how great it looked in our outdoor space. I believe the set has such a bold yet inviting color scheme that it will fit into place no matter what other tones are present in the backyard. Not to mention, the pillows and blankets from SunHaven really made everything blend and feel relaxing yet vibrant.

We truly love the look this SunHaven set brings to our backyard.

SunHaven Parker Collection One

Comfort

Summary: We love the comfort of these cushions on this SunHaven set and think these cushions will provide great support and comfort for several years to come.

One of the most nerve-wracking things about purchasing outdoor furniture online is that you don’t get to test it out. This means you don’t get to test out a very important attribute: how comfortable the furniture actually is. And it is really hard to tell if a cushion is going to be comfortable/durable just by looking at a picture online.

Well, from our hands-on first impressions, we love the comfort and feel of these cushions. The base cushions are 5” thick polyurethane wrapped with polyester batting, and the back cushions are about 8” thick with polyester fill. That’s a technical way of saying that these are highly durable cushions that provide excellent support. 

These are a bit firmer than our previous cushions but still very comfortable (and that may be due to those cushions experiencing a lot of use, leading to a loss of firmness). Based on our initial uses of these cushions, we don’t expect these things to lose their shape easily and will provide great support for several years… something we want from an outdoor set that we plan to use for many years. 

So if you are concerned about the comfort of this set, you can set those worries aside as these cushions are plenty comfortable and made with high-quality materials (more on this below).

Weather Resistance

Summary: Our first experience with rain on this set was a pleasant surprise, as the Olefin fabric on the cushions helped keep the actual cushion foam dry. And since this set is made of aluminum, we don’t have to worry about rusting.

A very important thing about any outdoor furniture set is if it will hold up against the rain/sun and other elements of your backyard. And for us living in Southeast Houston, where we get plenty of rain, heat, and humidity, this is a very important factor for us when purchasing patio furniture.

We got an early test of mother nature with this set. A few days after setting up our furniture, we got a very heavy rainstorm with very strong winds. To give you a feel for the intensity of this storm, the streets were flooding within 30 minutes in our neighborhood, and the wind was blowing rain squarely on our backdoor (which is hard to do since it is protected by about 15 feet of patio roof). 

Now, we learned our lesson a while ago not to leave any type of patio cushions out when a heavy storm is coming, even if the cushions are under a patio. So, for the furniture pieces that are unprotected by our patio roof, we store those cushions or move them more under the patio.

However, the intensity of this storm caught us off guard, so the cushions under our patio did get a decent amount of rain on them (way more than a simple misting). Luckily, the Olefin fabric on these cushions (which is known to be highly weather resistant, especially a rain-resistant material) protected the cushions from the rain. The fabric was definitely wet, but the water never penetrated into the cushion.

This is a huge plus because all that was needed was a simple air dry for a few hours and the cushions were perfectly useable.

Like I said, this was no normal downpour, so from this initial weather test, we came away impressed with the ability of the Olefin fabric on these cushions to keep the actual cushion dry. 

And we have to call out that this set is made out of aluminum. Aluminum will never rust like steel can, which can be very frustrating. This is something that we once experienced with a steel side table: after one rain, that table was already rusting onto our patio. However, with this aluminum SunHaven set, we don’t have to worry about the problem of rusting, and it has been easy to wipe away any dirt and keep it clean.

Final Thoughts

I’ll keep this short because this review has been pretty long (but hopefully, you have found it useful!). But, our new Parker Collection patio furniture from SunHaven has exceeded our expectations. It was a breeze to set up, it looks fantastic in our backyard, and we have already had several great times in our backyard with our family and friends with this new furniture. If you are looking for high-quality aluminum furniture, you should highly consider this set from SunHaven!

Hi, I'm Ashley!

Hi, I'm Ashley!

I started Live Your Best Backyard to share my (and my family's) hands-on experience and countless hours of research on all things backyard to help you find the best products, ideas, tips, and information for your backyard!

Read More About Me
Hi, I'm Ashley!

Hi, I'm Ashley!

I started Live Your Best Backyard to share my (and my family's) hands-on experience and countless hours of research on all things backyard to help you find the best products, ideas, tips, and information for your backyard!

Read More About Me
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