Brick Calculator

Enter your wall’s dimensions below to calculate how many bricks and bags of mortar you need. The standard planning figure is 7 bricks per square foot, but your bond pattern can shift that number.

Wall length (ft)

Wall height (ft)

Openings (sq ft, optional)

Waste buffer (%)

Mortar yield (bricks / bag)

Net wall area

120 sq ft

Bricks before waste

840

Bricks needed (incl. waste)

924

Mortar bags needed

25

Based on 7 bricks per square foot for a standard running bond wall, plus a 10% waste buffer and 37 bricks per bag of mortar mix. Other bond patterns or a double-wythe wall will need more bricks than this baseline estimate.

The Standard Estimate

A modular brick with a standard 3/8-inch mortar joint works out to approximately 7 bricks per square foot of wall face. This is the figure most suppliers and contractors use for a quick estimate on a standard running bond wall.

Bricks needed = Net Wall Area (sq ft) × 7

Example: A wall 15 ft long and 8 ft tall, with a 3 ft × 5 ft window opening.

Gross area: 15 × 8 = 120 sq ft

Window: 3 × 5 = 15 sq ft

Net area: 120 − 15 = 105 sq ft

105 × 7 = 735 bricks

Add 10% for cuts, breakage, and waste:

735 × 1.10 = 809 → order 810 bricks

The 7-Per-Square-Foot Figure Assumes Modular Brick

That number is specific to one size. “Brick” covers a range of formats, and the count per square foot varies by more than a factor of two across them, which makes size the single largest variable in a brick estimate, ahead of bond pattern.

What determines the count is the exposed face: the height and length you see once the brick is laid, joint included. The width, which determines how thick the wall is, does not enter into it at all.

Brick Type	Exposed Face (with joint)	Bricks per sq ft
Modular	8 × 2-2/3 in	6.75
Standard	8-3/8 × 2-5/8 in	6.55
Roman	12 × 2 in	6.00
Queen	8 × 3-1/8 in	5.76
King	10 × 3 in	4.80
Norman	12 × 2-2/3 in	4.50
Utility	12 × 4 in	3.00

Modular is the North American default and the source of the familiar “7 per square foot” shortcut. The true figure is 6.75, rounded up for convenience, which conveniently absorbs a little breakage.

The larger formats are worth knowing about for cost reasons. Utility brick covers the same wall with 3 units instead of 6.75, which more than halves the laying labour. Queen and king sizes exist largely because they cover more wall per unit than modular while still reading as conventional brick, and they are common on production housing for exactly that reason.

Facing brick is manufactured to ASTM C216, which sets dimensional tolerance ranges rather than exact sizes, so check the actual dimensions of the brick you are buying rather than assuming. Sizes are not perfectly standardised between manufacturers, and a difference of an eighth of an inch in face height compounds across a wall.

Metric Brick

Brick sold to the UK and most Commonwealth standards is 215 × 102.5 × 65 mm, laid with a 10 mm joint. That gives a 225 × 75 mm exposed face and works out to 59.3 bricks per square metre, which is where the standard “60 per m²” planning figure comes from.

Do not convert between the two systems by unit arithmetic alone. Metric brick is a genuinely different module, so a wall detailed around metric coursing will not work out to whole courses in imperial brick, and vice versa.

How Bond Pattern Changes the Count

The 7-bricks-per-square-foot figure assumes a running bond, the most common pattern, where each row is offset by half a brick from the row below. Other patterns change the effective brick count and cut waste:

• Running bond: baseline, most efficient, least waste
• Common bond / American bond: a header course (bricks laid end-out) every 5th or 6th row for a double-wythe wall; slightly more bricks per square foot due to the header course orientation
• Herringbone or basketweave (typically for paving, not walls): significantly more cuts and waste, similar to tile in a diagonal pattern
• Double-wythe walls: roughly double the single-wythe brick count, since you’re building two brick layers with a cavity or solid bond between them

If you’re doing anything other than a standard single-wythe running bond veneer, adjust your estimate upward and confirm with your mason before ordering.

How far upward is a judgement call, and it is worth knowing where brick sits against other materials before you pick a number: the material waste factors guide collects the allowances by trade and explains when a figure at the top of the range is justified rather than cautious.

How Brick Is Sold: Cubes, Straps, and Why It Matters

Brick is not sold by the piece. Suppliers ship it banded into a cube, a self-stacking unit holding roughly 500 modular bricks, though the count varies between manufacturers and runs anywhere from about 450 to 530. Smaller quantities may come as a strap or band, a partial bundle.

Two consequences for ordering:

• Round to the cube where you can. Broken cubes often carry a price premium, and on a large order the difference between rounding up to a full cube and buying a cube plus a part-strap can be meaningful.
• Confirm the count in your supplier’s cube before dividing. An order calculated against 500 that arrives in cubes of 460 leaves you nearly a cube short across a large job.

Colour consistency is the other reason to order in one go. Brick is fired in batches, and shade varies between runs in a way that shows across a wall. Order the whole job at once, and if you are using more than one cube, blend from several rather than working through them one at a time. Pulling from three or four cubes as you lay distributes any variation instead of leaving a visible band where one cube ended.

Mortar

Roughly 1 bag of mortar mix per 35–40 bricks with standard 3/8-inch joints.

810 bricks ÷ 37 (middle estimate) ≈ 22 bags

Brick drinks noticeably more mortar per square foot of wall than block does, which is why the two bag rates are not interchangeable. The mortar, grout and core fill guide explains where the difference comes from and sets mortar against grout and standard concrete mix.