Paver Calculator

How the paver count works: area divided by paver area

The core math never changes: take the area you want to cover, divide it by the area one paver covers, and add a waste allowance for cuts. Everything else on this page is detail around those three steps.

One habit trips people up: paver dimensions are given in inches, while the patio is measured in feet. Convert one of them before dividing. Since a square foot is 144 square inches, the cleanest version is:

pavers = patio area x 144 / (paver length x paver width)

Writing it this way, with the 144 folded in, means one multiplication and one division in whole numbers, and you never touch a decimal that rounds the wrong way. Round the final answer up to a whole paver, then add the waste percentage for the pattern you are laying. If your supplier sells by the square foot or by the pallet, divide your paver count by the per-pallet count to see how many pallets to schedule for delivery.

A quick sanity check helps catch typos: a 4 in x 8 in brick-style paver covers 32 sq in, and 144 / 32 = 4.5, so you need 4.5 of them per square foot, or 450 for a 100 sq ft walkway. If your number lands far from that kind of benchmark, re-measure before you order.

Worked example: a 12 ft by 10 ft patio

Say the patio is 12 ft across and 10 ft deep, and the paver you like is the workhorse 12 in x 8 in concrete shape.

• Patio area: 12 x 10 = 120 sq ft
• Paver area: 12 x 8 = 96 sq in, and 96 / 144 = 0.67 sq ft
• Pavers, no waste: 120 x 144 / 96 = 180 pavers
• With 5% waste: 180 x 1.05 = 189 pavers, so order 189 or round to a full bundle

If the same patio used a 16 in x 16 in paver instead, the count drops to 120 x 144 / 256 = 67.5, so 68 pavers before waste and 72 with 5%. Fewer, larger units lay faster and waste less, but they are heavier to carry and harder to cut tight curves with. A 6 in x 9 in paver on the same patio takes 120 x 144 / 54 = 320 pavers, which is why small units cost more to install even when the per-piece price looks cheap.

Cutting waste: it depends on the pattern

The waste allowance is not a fixed number, it follows the pattern. Straight rows of running bond break the patio into long courses with cuts mostly at the two edges, so 5% covers it. Herringbone cuts a notch at nearly every unit, and diagonal layouts push cuts into all four edges, so they waste more. Interlocking Concrete Pavement Institute contractor guidance generally puts waste between 5% and 10%, and up to 15% for diagonal herringbone.

Two situations push waste higher than the table. First, a narrow patio, say 3 ft wide, turns almost every paver into a cut piece, because the width lands mid-unit. Second, curves. A curved border or kidney-shaped edge can add several points of waste on its own. If your layout has both, take the higher row in the table and consider buying one extra bundle.

Sand and gravel: the base is a separate calculation

Pavers sit on a bedding layer of coarse sand, and the sand sits on compacted gravel. Both are volume calculations, not piece counts, so work them separately from the paver order.

• Bedding sand: 1 in deep is the standard for patios. For the 120 sq ft example, 120 x 1 / 12 = 10 cu ft, which is 10 / 27 = 0.37 cubic yards, roughly a cubic yard scoop delivered or about 1,000 lb bagged.
• Gravel base: 4 in compacted for a patio, 6 to 8 in under a driveway. At 4 in the same patio needs 120 x 4 / 12 = 40 cu ft, and 40 / 27 = 1.48 cubic yards. Order 1.5 yards and you have a small margin for the trench over the whole slab.

Depth matters more than people expect because the base carries the load. A patio that only sees foot traffic does fine on 4 in of compacted gravel, while a driveway that will hold a pickup needs 6 in or more, and the extra gravel also buys you a flatter, more stable finish. Compaction shrinks loose gravel by roughly a fifth, so what you spread and what remains after the plate compactor passes are not the same volume. Delivery by the cubic yard is far cheaper than bags once you pass about half a yard, so price both before you decide.

How many pavers cover 100 sq ft

Most suppliers quote coverage per square foot, and the common shapes cluster around a few counts. This table is the fast lookup version of the same math.

Notice how the count triples from the large square down to the brick shape at the same coverage. That count drives three costs at once: pieces to unload, joints to sand, and hours to lay. If a quote from an installer seems high for a small-unit design, this table explains why. The per-piece price of a 4 in x 8 in paver can be a quarter of a 16 in x 16 in slab, and the installed cost still comes out higher.

Measuring odd-shaped areas

Real yards rarely give you a clean rectangle, and the fix is to break the shape into rectangles and add the pieces. An L-shaped yard is two rectangles: a 20 ft x 12 ft section plus a 8 ft x 10 ft section comes to 20 x 12 + 8 x 10 = 320 sq ft. Measure each leg once, sketch it, and total the areas before touching the calculator.

For curves, treat the shape as its bounding rectangle and accept that the waste allowance absorbs the difference, or measure a circle directly with 3.14 x radius x radius. A 12 ft diameter fire pit surround, for example, is 3.14 x 6 x 6 = 113 sq ft. Circles waste more than rectangles because every radial course needs a cut, so apply the diagonal row of the waste table rather than the straight-row one.

Slopes deserve one extra note. Measure length along the slope, not the flat projection, when the paving runs uphill, because a 20 ft run at a gentle 5% grade is 20 x 1.00125 = 20.03 ft along the surface. The difference is tiny on gentle grades, but a steep walkway can add real material, and the base excavation depth grows too.

What the whole project costs

Material prices move with region and season, so treat these as planning figures and get local quotes before you commit. For the 120 sq ft example patio, a reasonable mid-range budget looks like this.

That is roughly $773 in materials for a do-it-yourself patio, before renting a plate compactor and a wet saw. Hiring the same job out usually lands between $10 and $25 per sq ft installed, so 120 sq ft runs $1,200 to $3,000 depending on excavation and access. Labor, not pavers, is the expensive half of a professional install, which is exactly why the DIY route is popular for flat, simple rectangles.

Common mistakes this calculator prevents

Four errors show up again and again. Mixing inches and feet, which shrinks or inflates the count by a factor of 12 or 144, is the big one, and the single-formula approach above avoids it. Forgetting the pattern waste turns a herringbone patio short by one in ten pavers, usually discovered on a Sunday afternoon when the supplier is closed.

Third is ordering pavers but no base material. The patio is only as flat as the gravel under it, and the sand and gravel volumes in this page are part of the same delivery conversation. Fourth is skipping the spare-unit allowance: buy the pattern waste and then two or three extra whole pavers in the same production run. Manufacturers retool colors, and a cracked paver in year five is much easier to swap if the spare came from the same batch. University of Minnesota Extension notes on landscape paving make the same point about base preparation being the step worth slowing down for, and the Interlocking Concrete Pavement Institute publishes free construction details worth printing before you start digging.

Estimates on this page use typical retail quantities and prices. Confirm paver coverage, pallet counts and local material prices before ordering.