EstimatorKitFree paver calculator
Pavers, and the three layers under them
Give the paved area, the unit size and how it will be laid, and this returns the pieces to buy along with the base stone, the bedding sand, the jointing sand and the edge restraint that go with them. The cut allowance follows the pattern rather than a flat percentage — 5 percent square-set against 15 at 45 degrees — and the base is figured on a footprint wider than the paving, because that is how a paved edge stays put.
- 100% free
- No signup
- 6 unit sizes
- Cuts by pattern
- Four layers priced
4 in of compacted base under 60 mm units, on ground that already drains.
Courses offset by half a unit. The cuts are the two ends of each course, and the offcut from one end starts the next.
Measure the paving, not the hole. The excavation is bigger and the tool works that out.
Type the nominal size — the joint lives inside it. 2.375 in is a 60 mm unit and 3.125 in an 80 mm one.
5% is the allowance for running bond — 5% where the field is square-set and only the outline is cut, rising to 15% at 45 degrees where every edge unit is a triangle. It moves with how many curves, steps, tree wells and obstacles the outline has, so it is a field rather than a fact.
Bedding, base spread, edging and pallet size
Bedding starts at 1 in — 1 in of screeded bedding sand, held to plus or minus 1/4 in — and the field is editable, though nothing you get to choose: a deeper bed ruts under load and a thinner one will not screed flat. Base density starts at 2,700 lb per cubic yard — loose delivered weight, typical for crushed limestone base, which moves with stone type — trap rock runs heavier than limestone. Edge sections default to 8 ft: the common length of a rigid paver edge section, and that varies by brand — several ship 6 ft 6 in lengths instead. Pallet coverage is on the manufacturer’s sheet and differs by unit, so it stays blank rather than guessed.
Buy this many pavers
1,134 pieces
- Fills the field
- 1,080
- Cuts at 5%
- +54
- Sold as
- 252 sq ft
- Per square foot
- 4.5
| Layer | Order | Covers |
|---|---|---|
| Base stone | 5.69 tons | 273 sq ft |
| Bedding sand | 40 bags | 0.74 cu yd |
| Polymeric joint sand | 5 bags | 2.09 cu ft of joint |
| Edge restraint | 8 sections | 64 lf, 64 spikes |
Dig 7 3/8" below the finished paver surface: 4 in of compacted base, 1 in of bedding and the 2.38 in unit itself. The stone goes in at 5 in loose to finish at 4 in — the site-wide 20% allowance, since loose aggregate loses roughly a fifth of its depth when compacted to grade.
The base is 273 sq ft against 240 sq ft of paving, because it is built 6 in past every edge. That extra 33 sq ft is what keeps the outside course from standing on the shoulder of the excavation.
Jointing sand comes from your own geometry rather than a coverage claim on a bag: 4.64% of the surface is joint, filled 2.25 in deep because polymeric sand is swept in and struck about 1/8 in down so the chamfer stays clear of binder. That works out at 50.4 sq ft to a 50 lb bag — the standard bag of polymeric jointing sand — and wider joints or thicker units pull it down fast. The spike count assumes one 10 in spike per foot of straight restraint, and curves and soft ground both want them at 6 in.
How to work out a paver order
The unit size decides the count; the pattern decides the waste.
Measure the paving, not the excavation
Give the length and width of the finished surface, or the diameter if it is a round patio. The hole is bigger than the paving on every side and the tool works that out for you, so measuring the string lines rather than the dig keeps the paver count honest. A patio that steps down to a path is two shapes: run each one and add the pieces.
Set the unit and the pattern
Pick a nominal size or type your own — the joint lives inside the nominal figure, which is why a 4 × 8 gives exactly 4.5 pieces to the square foot. Then choose how it will be laid, because that is what decides the cut allowance: a square-set field is cut only around its outline, while a 45-degree herringbone turns every edge unit into a triangle and costs three times as much in offcuts.
Read the stack downward and dig to the total
The panel lists the four things you carry home — base stone in tons, bedding sand in bags or yards, jointing sand in bags, and edge sections with their spikes — plus the depth to excavate below the finished surface. Order the base to the loose figure rather than the finished one, and take the pallet coverage off the product sheet if you want the count in pallets as well as pieces.
Technical specifications
| Unit sizes and thickness | 4 × 8, 6 × 6, 6 × 9, 8 × 8, 12 × 12 and 12 × 18 nominal — 4.5, 4, 2.67, 2.25, 1 and 0.67 pieces to the square foot — or any size typed in; 2 3/8 in for a 60 mm paver, 3 1/8 in for an 80 mm one |
|---|---|
| Cut allowance | 5% square-set, 10% for 90-degree herringbone, 15% at 45 degrees, 20% for a circle kit or curved field; the default follows the pattern and the field stays editable |
| Base presets | 4 in under a patio, 6 in over clay, 8 in under a driveway, 12 in in deep frost, and zero when the pavers go over an existing slab |
| Base footprint | Built 6 in past the paving on foot traffic and 12 in under vehicles, so a 12 × 16 ft patio takes 221 sq ft of stone against 192 sq ft of paving |
| Bedding course | 1 in of screeded concrete sand held to ±1/4 in, reported in cubic yards and in 50 lb bags |
| Jointing sand | Derived from your joint width and unit thickness rather than a coverage claim: 4 × 8 units at a 1/8 in joint work out near 57 sq ft to a 50 lb bag before whole bags are rounded up |
| Edge restraint | Perimeter in linear feet less any run against a wall, in 8 ft sections, with one 10 in spike per foot of straight run |
| Sent off the page | Nothing — the whole stack is arithmetic in the tab you are reading |
Frequently asked questions
How many pavers do I need for a 12 by 16 ft patio?
908 of the 4 × 8 size laid in running bond. The arithmetic is 192 sq ft at 4.5 pieces to the square foot, which is 864 to fill the field, plus 5 percent for the cuts around the outline. Change the unit and the count changes with it rather than in proportion to it: the same patio takes 538 of a 6 × 9 or 135 of a 12 × 18 slab, and the larger the unit the more each cut costs you when the outline is not a whole number of them.
Do I have to use polymeric sand, or will ordinary joint sand do?
Ordinary sand works and then leaves. Swept sand has nothing holding it in the joint, so a season of hose water, leaf blowers and rain moves it out of the high side of any slope and weed seed moves in behind it. Polymeric sand carries a binder that sets when it is watered, and it holds unless the joint was underfilled. Two conditions come with it: the joints must be dry and filled to within about an eighth of an inch of the surface before you wet them, and every grain must be blown off the faces first, because binder that cures on the face of a paver leaves a haze that does not come off. It is also the wrong product for permeable pavers, where the joint is the drainage path and gluing it shut defeats the pavement.
How thick does the base under pavers have to be?
Four inches of compacted aggregate under foot traffic on ground that already drains, and eight to twelve where vehicles run. The number responds to what is underneath rather than what is on top: a sandy subgrade carries the load itself, clay does not and pumps up into the stone every wet spring, and a deep frost line pushes the whole build-up deeper because the base has to sit below the heave. Those figures are the presets in the tool and they are a starting point, not a specification — your local code and, on anything vehicular, a soils report are what actually decide.
Why does the base have to be wider than the patio?
Because the outside course carries the same load as the middle with stone on only one side of it. Compacted aggregate spreads a point load into a cone, and a cone needs material to spread into; stop the base at the paver line and the edge units are standing on the shoulder of the excavation, which is the softest ground on the job. Six inches past the paving on foot traffic and twelve under vehicles is the usual answer. It is not a rounding: a 12 × 16 ft patio sits on 221 sq ft of base rather than 192, which is 15 percent more stone than the paved area suggests.
Can I lay pavers straight on sand with no base?
Only for something nobody uses. The one inch of bedding sand is a leveling course whose whole job is to let a unit be tapped to line — it has no bearing capacity and it is deliberately too thin to have any. Stepping stones through a lawn survive that treatment; a patio with a table on it, a walk that gets a wheelbarrow, and anything a car touches will move within a year, and the failure shows up as individual units dropping rather than as the whole field sinking. Set the base depth to zero in the tool only when there is genuinely an existing concrete slab underneath doing the work.
Why is 45-degree herringbone the pattern for a driveway and also the most wasteful?
Because the same geometry that resists a turning wheel guarantees a cut at every edge. Herringbone locks each unit against neighbors on both axes, so a braking or steering load cannot walk a course out of line the way it can with running bond, and setting the pattern at 45 degrees to the direction of travel means no continuous joint ever runs with a wheel track. The bill arrives at the outline: not one unit meets the border square, so the entire perimeter is a saw cut and the allowance goes from 5 percent to 15. Under a car that is a good trade. On a patio nobody drives on it is a tenth of the order spent on appearance.
Do I need edge restraint along the side against the house?
No, and that is the rule rather than an exception — restraint is needed wherever the field meets something soft. A house wall, a poured curb, a step or an existing slab already resists the sideways push, so those runs come off the linear footage; soil, lawn and planting beds do not, and every foot of that boundary needs a section spiked down. The push is real and constant: each unit that gets stepped on tries to move outward, the field transmits it to the perimeter, and without a restraint the outside course walks away by a joint width a year until the pattern opens up behind it.
About the paver stack, and the two layers people leave out
A dry-laid paver field is four purchases and a fastener, and counting the pavers answers about a third of it. Under the units there is a compacted aggregate base doing the structural work, on top of that an inch of screeded bedding sand that exists purely so each unit can be tapped to line, and between the units a jointing sand that turns several hundred separate blocks into something that behaves as one surface. Two of those are sand and they are not the same sand: the bed is a washed coarse concrete sand and the joints take a polymeric product, which is the distinction the sand calculator sets out in full alongside the other four sands sold under the same word. The base material is a separate decision again — dense-graded, with the fines left in — and the crushed stone calculator prices the grades by their size numbers.
The two layers that get left out of an estimate are the ones at the outside edges of the job, and they fail together. The base is built past the paving — six inches on a patio, a foot under a driveway — because compacted stone spreads load into a cone and the outermost course needs something to spread into; and the perimeter is spiked down with an edge restraint wherever it meets soil rather than a wall. Take away either and the field creeps outward from every footfall, opening the joints from the edge inward until the jointing sand has nothing to sit in. That is what interlock actually means here: it is mechanical, it is produced by the units, the joint fill and the restraint acting together, and it is not a property any one of them has alone. The base depth also has to be ordered loose rather than finished, which is the same arithmetic the gravel calculator sets out for driveways and the reason the tool above prints a spreading depth beside the compacted one.
Pattern waste is where paver estimating parts company with tiling, and copying the tile figures across is why so many orders arrive long. The difference is the boundary. A tiled floor has to meet walls that are already standing, so even a straight lay throws away about a tenth of the material; a paved field is bounded by an edge you set yourself, which means a square-set pattern can be planned onto whole units before a single cut is made, and 5 percent covers the corners, the breakages and the one course that will not quite close. Angle is what actually costs, and it costs at the perimeter rather than in the field. If the units are going into a wall rather than a floor the bond arithmetic is different again and belongs to the brick calculator, and if you are weighing all of this against pouring instead, a slab is a different trade with forms, a mix and a rebar grid in it — the concrete slab calculator costs that version.
The patio stays in the tab you drew it in
Every number on this page is worked out by JavaScript running in the tab you are reading it in. Nothing you type — measurements, quantities, the prices your supplier quoted you — is uploaded, logged or kept, which is also why the calculators carry on working on a site with no signal.
The pallet coverage and the unit sizes you type come off a product sheet you were handed; they are read by the arithmetic on this page and by nothing else, and closing the tab is the whole of the deletion process. No manufacturer is told which paver you priced.