Paver calculator: pavers, base gravel and sand

How the paver count is calculated

The math is short. A square foot is 144 square inches. Divide 144 by the face area of one paver and you have the pavers per square foot: a 12 × 12 is exactly 1 per square foot, a 4 × 8 is 4.5, a 6 × 9 is 2.67. Multiply by your area, add the waste allowance, round up to a whole paver. That is the number in the green box.

The waste allowance is not padding. Every paver that meets an edge on a curve or a diagonal gets cut, and the offcut is usually too small to use anywhere else. A square patio with straight edges and a running bond loses about 5 percent. A typical rectangle with a border course and a couple of cuts around a step loses 10. Herringbone, diagonal layouts and anything with curves lose 15 or more, because every row ends in a triangle. Pick the chip that matches your layout, not the one that makes the number smaller.

One more reason to round up: pavers are sold by the pallet, and dye lots vary between pallets. If you come up 20 pavers short at the end of the job and the store's new pallet is half a shade lighter, that patch will be visible from the kitchen window for the next 25 years. Order the extra and keep a dozen spares in the garage for repairs.

The base is where the money and the failures are

Pavers are the part you see. The base is the part that decides whether the patio is still flat in five years. Under a patio or walkway you need 4 inches of compacted crushed gravel (3/4 inch minus, sometimes sold as road base or crusher run). Under a driveway it is 6 inches, and on heavy clay soil or anywhere a truck will park, 8. The calculator converts your area and depth into cubic yards (area × depth in feet ÷ 27) and then into tons at 1.4 tons per cubic yard, because gravel yards sell by the ton and delivery trucks are rated by the ton.

Compaction shrinks gravel by 10 to 15 percent, so the delivered volume ends up a little thinner than the number you ordered. The tons figure here is for the loose material you buy; if your soil is soft, order the next depth up rather than adding a fudge factor. Compact in 2-inch lifts with a plate compactor, not one 4-inch pass. Renting the compactor costs about $90 a day and is not optional.

On top of the gravel goes 1 inch of coarse concrete sand, screeded flat with a pipe and a straightedge. Not play sand, not masonry sand, and never more than an inch: a thick sand bed lets pavers rock and settle. The sand figure uses 1.3 tons per cubic yard. Then the pavers, then polymeric sand swept into the joints and misted so it sets. A 50 pound bag covers roughly 80 square feet of large slabs, 65 of 12-inch pavers, and only 50 of small brick-size units, because small pavers mean more joint per square foot. The calculator picks the coverage based on your paver size.

Edge restraint runs the full perimeter. Without it the outer pavers creep outward, the joints open, and the sand washes out. Plastic restraint with 10-inch spikes costs about $2 a foot. In sq ft mode the calculator assumes a square footprint for the perimeter; if your patio is a long rectangle, add up the real sides.

What the materials cost in 2026

Concrete pavers run $2 to $8 per square foot at the yard, with the plain grey 12 × 12 at the bottom and tumbled, multi-size or permeable units at the top. Natural stone (bluestone, travertine, flagstone cut to size) is $8 to $20 and up. Gravel is around $45 a ton delivered in most of the country, concrete sand about $40, polymeric sand $30 a bag, edge restraint $2 a foot. The cost box adds those up for your inputs, with a 30 percent spread on the base materials to cover regional delivery differences.

This is materials only. Labor on a paver patio is typically as much again as the materials, and more if the site needs excavation of an old slab or a retaining edge. For an installed number by material and site conditions, use the patio cost calculator. The two are built from the same price data, so they agree with each other.

• Delivery is usually a flat $75 to $150 per truck, so one combined gravel and sand delivery beats two.
• Pallets of pavers are 80 to 120 square feet each; ask the yard to quote by the pallet and by the piece for the remainder.
• Renting a plate compactor, a wet saw and a screed setup runs $150 to $250 for a weekend.

Common mistakes the numbers do not catch

Forgetting the slope. A patio needs to fall away from the house at about 1/4 inch per foot, or water sits against the foundation. That does not change the material count, but it changes how you set your string lines before the first shovel of gravel goes in.

Skipping the geotextile. On clay or silty soil, a layer of woven landscape fabric between the subgrade and the gravel stops the gravel from sinking into the mud over time. It costs about $0.15 a square foot and is the cheapest insurance on the whole job.

Cutting the base short at the edges. The gravel base should extend 6 inches beyond the paver edge on every side, so the edge restraint sits on compacted base and not on soil. If you excavate to the exact patio footprint, the edges fail first. Add a foot to each dimension when you dig.

Frequently asked questions