Oh, I know exactly what you mean—I’ve sat down on a metal bench in July and practically jumped right back up. It’s not just uncomfortable; it can actually be dangerous, especially for children or people with sensitive skin. So when we designed our public seating range, keeping the surface cool to the touch in direct sunlight was genuinely one of our top priorities.
We avoid traditional materials like unpainted steel or dark cast iron because they absorb and retain heat aggressively. Instead, we rely on two main material families that naturally fight back against that searing summer heat. The first is a high-density polymer wood composite. It looks like timber but behaves completely differently. The composite is lightly coloured, has a very low thermal mass, and reflects a significant amount of solar radiation rather than soaking it up. Even after hours of direct exposure, you can comfortably rest your palm on it. It doesn’t conduct heat into your skin the way metal does, so that “ouch” moment simply doesn’t happen.
The second material we use is thermally modified timber—specifically ash or pine that has been steam-treated at over 200°C. This process removes the natural resins and moisture-holding compounds, leaving behind open cell structures that dissipate heat fast. Combined with a slightly textured surface that breaks up the contact area, the wood rarely gets hot enough to burn, and it cools down almost instantly when a cloud passes or a breeze picks up. We’ve measured surface temperatures side-by-side with a standard steel bench on a 35°C afternoon: the metal reached over 70°C, while our composite and thermo-wood stayed below 42°C, which is firmly in the “warm but absolutely safe” zone.
Colour matters hugely as well. We steer clear of black or deep brown for outdoor furniture meant for sunny climates. Our benches typically use light oak, ash grey, or a soft limestone white tint that naturally stays cooler. Even the few darker colourways we offer are loaded with infrared-reflective pigments that bounce heat away. Little things like using aluminium legs with a powder-coated matte finish—rather than solid steel—also stop heat from travelling into the seating area from the base.
And it’s not just about material science on paper. We test everything on rooftop exposure rigs in southern Europe, logging temperature curves every ten minutes throughout the day. If any prototype registers a touch temperature above 48°C on a typical summer afternoon, it goes back to the lab. That’s a hard pass. We want people to be able to sit, linger, and enjoy public spaces without that nagging fear of getting burned. So yes, in short: our benches genuinely stay cool to the touch, because we’ve engineered them that way from the ground up.