Porch swing cushions for Indiana farmhouses, bungalows and dune cottages

Wet Mays, sticky Augusts and 113 freezing nights

Pull up a chair, because Indiana weather has an opinion about every porch cushion.

Indianapolis gets 43.63 in (111 cm) of precipitation a year, and May and June are the wettest months at about 4.75 and 4.95 in. It averages 127 days with measurable rain or snow, and August and September mornings average 86% relative humidity. A cushion that soaks up a June storm during a muggy week won't dry by itself overnight.

Winter is real: about 113 nights a year at or below 32°F (0°C) and 25.5 in (65 cm) of snow in Indianapolis. Up by the dunes, South Bend averages 64.5 in (164 cm) of snow and 140 wet days. Down south, Evansville is gentler in winter, with about 95 freezing nights, and hotter in summer, with 42 days at 90°F (32°C) or above.

Sun is the mildest of your troubles. Indianapolis gets about 51% of possible sunshine and 179 cloudy days a year, so fading comes slower here than down South. Damp is the thing to beat, and the EPA's rule is the one I live by: get anything soaked dry within 24 to 48 hours.

Farm porches, Indy bungalows, dune cottages and Brown County cabins

Indiana helped name a house. In the 1930s a geographer called the tall, one-room-deep farmhouse the I-house because it was so common on farms in Indiana, Illinois and Iowa, and many of them wear a porch across the front. Out in the country, that porch holds the swing and a row of rockers.

In Indianapolis, farmland in what's now Butler-Tarkington gave way to middle-class bungalows between 1910 and 1920, set close to the street along the streetcar line. Bungalows and Foursquares like those carry deep front porches, and plenty have been closed in as three-season rooms.

Up north, Indiana Dunes National Park runs along 15 miles (24 km) of Lake Michigan shoreline, and the cottages near it have screened porches and damp mornings; the Great Lakes cottage notes cover closing one for winter. Down south, painters started the Brown County Art Colony in 1907, and the county, nearly 90% forest, is still cabin country.

Every one of those porches asks the same three things of a swing cushion: the right size between the arms, ties that hold, and fabric that forgives damp. The porch swing size Pattern walks through the measuring, and porch swing cushions gathers the rest.

Hydrangea blue, barn red and dune sand

Porch color here comes from what grows around the porch. On a white farmhouse rail I like dove gray with navy ticking pillows, the pairing in the photo up top, because it hides summer dust and doesn't argue with the hydrangeas. Near the dunes, sand, ivory and slate blue look right against weathered shingles. In a Brown County cabin, rust, brown and forest green sit easy against the logs.

Stripes are a porch classic. On a long swing seat the fabric roll decides which way they run, so read the stripe direction Pattern before you fall in love. Cotton ticking is lovely but stains more easily; on a swing that meets popsicles, pick an outdoor stripe from the outdoor fabric range.

What color is your porch ceiling? Start there. The cushion should agree with it.