How Many Pavers for a Patio (8x10 to 20x20, by Paver Size)

A 12x12 patio takes 156 pavers at 12x12, 700 at 4x8, or 39 of the 24x24 slabs, each count carrying the 8 percent running-bond waste. A 10x10 needs 108 of the 12x12 units and a 20x20 needs 432. Herringbone in 4x8 brick pavers pushes the 12x12 patio to 746. Under that 12x12 patio goes 1.78 cubic yards of compacted base at 4 inches and 0.44 cubic yards of bedding sand.

Area length (ft)

Area width (ft)

Paver length (in)

Paver width (in)

Layout pattern

Running bond (8%)Herringbone (15%)

Gravel base depth (in)

Bare pavers

144

Pavers needed (Running bond, 8%)

156

Gravel base (4in)

1.78 cu yd

Sand bedding (1in)

0.44 cu yd

Pavers needed already rounds up to the nearest whole paver. Gravel base and sand bedding are separate materials that sit underneath the pavers, not part of the paver count. Order both in whole or half-yard increments, rounding up to what your supplier offers.

Running bond: nine patio sizes against six paver sizes

Running bond is the pattern most patios get laid in, because the only cuts are the half pavers at the end of every other row and the trims along the border. The paver calculator adds 8 percent for those cuts, and every number in this table already includes it and is rounded up to the next whole paver.

Patio	Sq ft	4x8	6x6	6x9	12x12	16x16	24x24
8x10	80	389	346	231	87	49	22
10x10	100	486	432	288	108	61	27
10x12	120	584	519	346	130	73	33
12x12	144	700	623	415	156	88	39
12x16	192	934	830	553	208	117	52
14x14	196	953	847	565	212	120	53
16x16	256	1,245	1,106	738	277	156	70
16x20	320	1,556	1,383	922	346	195	87
20x20	400	1,944	1,728	1,152	432	243	108

The paver sizes are nominal face dimensions in inches. The 4x8 is the brick-size unit most people picture when they say paver; 6x6 and 6x9 are the common mid-size rectangles; 12x12 and 16x16 are the square patio stones sold loose at home centers; the 24x24 is a slab rather than a paver, usually around 2 inches thick and heavy enough to be a two-person lift.

The bare count under each cell is the patio area divided by the face area of one paver. For a 12x12 patio that is 144 square feet divided by 1 square foot, so 144 exactly, and 8 percent takes it to 156. The 6x9 column is the one that never lands on a whole number: a 6x9 covers 0.375 square feet, so an 8x10 patio works out at 213.3 bare pavers, which becomes 231 after waste. The fraction is a reminder that one row along one edge is going to be cut.

Two things the table does not know. It assumes the patio is a plain rectangle; a curve, a bay or a notch around a step adds cuts beyond the 8 percent. And it assumes the pavers are the size on the label. Many “12x12” stones are actually 11 7/8 inches, and metric pavers sold as 4x8 can be 100 by 200 millimeters, a shade under. Over 400 square feet those fractions add up to a row, so read the actual face dimension off the product sheet and put it into the calculator if it differs from the nominal.

For a patio between the sizes in the table, the 10x10 row is a per-100-square-foot figure: scale it, or set the widget above to your own dimensions.

Herringbone, and the pavers it can be laid with

Herringbone is a pattern for rectangles. Each paver turns 90 degrees against its neighbor so that a long side meets a short side, and a square unit has no long side to turn. The 4x8 at a 2-to-1 ratio is the classic herringbone paver; the 6x9 works too and gives a bolder scale. The 15 percent the calculator applies for herringbone is for the angled border cuts, and it has nothing to apply to on a 12x12 or a 24x24. Select herringbone in the calculator with a square paver entered and it will still return a count carrying 15 percent; treat that as an allowance for a diagonal lay, which makes the same angled border cuts, not as a herringbone.

Patio	4x8 herringbone	6x9 herringbone
10x10	518	307
10x12	621	368
12x12	746	442
12x16	994	589
16x16	1,325	786
16x20	1,656	982
20x20	2,070	1,227

Set against the running-bond column, the pattern costs a 12x16 patio 60 extra 4x8 pavers (934 against 994) and a 20x20 patio 126 (1,944 against 2,070). A 45-degree herringbone, with the pavers running diagonally to the house wall, cuts every border piece on an angle and earns the full 15 percent. A 90-degree herringbone, with the pavers square to the wall, has straight cuts along two sides and fewer offcuts, so the real waste lands somewhere between the two patterns.

A soldier course around the edge changes the arithmetic in your favor. Whole pavers laid end to end along the border hide the angled cuts behind them, and the border pavers are counted by perimeter rather than by area: a 4x8 laid with its long side along the edge covers 8 inches of border, so the border count is the perimeter in inches divided by 8. Take that strip out of the field area before you apply the herringbone count to what is left.

Base and bedding sand under each patio size

The pavers are the smallest of the three deliveries. Below them is a compacted aggregate base and above that an inch of coarse sand, and both are sized by area and depth rather than by paver.

Patio	Sq ft	Base at 4 in (cu yd)	Base at 6 in (cu yd)	Base at 4 in (tons)	Bedding sand (cu yd)
8x10	80	0.99	1.48	1.38	0.25
10x10	100	1.23	1.85	1.73	0.31
10x12	120	1.48	2.22	2.07	0.37
12x12	144	1.78	2.67	2.49	0.44
12x16	192	2.37	3.56	3.32	0.59
14x14	196	2.42	3.63	3.39	0.60
16x16	256	3.16	4.74	4.42	0.79
16x20	320	3.95	5.93	5.53	0.99
20x20	400	4.94	7.41	6.91	1.23

These base volumes are the finished, compacted layer under the paver footprint, with no allowance added, and the tons column converts the 4 inch figure at 1.4 tons per cubic yard. Four inches is the pedestrian patio depth; the 6 inch column is for clay or a hard-freeze climate, and the paver base and bedding guide covers which one your ground needs and what the material should be. Two corrections sit on top of these figures before you order. Loose aggregate compacts down, so the loose volume that arrives has to be more than the compacted volume in the table, and the material waste factors guide sets out how much. And the base has to extend past the pavers, which a later section comes back to. Run the final figure through the gravel calculator with its load-bearing buffer to get a tonnage to phone through.

Bedding sand is the one quantity that does not need a compaction allowance, because it is screeded loose at 1 inch and stays that way until the pavers are vibrated in. It comes by the cubic yard from the same yard as the base, or in bags for the small patios: 0.25 cubic yards for an 8x10 is a trunk-load of bags, 1.23 for a 20x20 is a bulk delivery.

The count rounds up twice: to a paver, then to a pallet

The waste factor produces a decimal and the supplier sells whole pavers, so the table rounds up. That is the first rounding and it is cheap. The second one is the pallet.

Pavers come stacked and banded on pallets, and most yards price a full pallet lower per piece than loose pavers, or will not break a pallet at all for a delivery. How much a pallet covers depends entirely on the product: a pallet of 60 mm 4x8 units typically covers somewhere around 80 to 120 square feet, a pallet of thicker or larger stones covers less, and the figure is printed on the pallet tag as square feet or pieces per pallet. Check the tag rather than a rule of thumb, because two products from the same manufacturer can differ by a third.

Dividing a count by pieces per pallet almost never gives a whole number. A 12x12 patio in 4x8 pavers at 700 pieces is a little over 155 square feet of paver face, which at the typical coverage above is anywhere from one pallet and a third to just under two: in practice two pallets with the surplus kept back, or one pallet plus loose pieces if the yard will sell them. The leftover is not wasted. Pavers from a different production run will not quite match in color, so a part-pallet of the original run stored behind the shed is what makes a repair invisible in five years. If the yard will sell loose pavers to make up a partial, compare the per-piece premium against the cost of a whole extra pallet; on the small patios the whole pallet is often the cheaper way to get the last 40 pavers.

A pallet of concrete pavers is also heavy, typically on the order of a ton and a half or more depending on thickness and count, so the delivery truck’s forklift will set it where the driver can reach, not where you want it. Plan the drop so you carry pavers once.

The base runs past the pavers, and the table does not

Every base figure above covers the paver footprint and nothing beyond it. A real patio needs base outside the field, because the edge restraint that stops the pavers creeping has to spike into compacted aggregate, and bedding sand will not hold a spike. The paver base and bedding guide sets out how far past the pavers the base runs and why the trench gets cut to that line on the first day. For the quantity, add the overhang to the dimensions: a 12x12 patio with base extending 6 inches beyond each side becomes a 13x13 base footprint, 169 square feet in place of 144, roughly a sixth more aggregate than the table row.

Edge restraint itself is bought by the linear foot. A 12x12 patio has a 48 foot perimeter, and if one side runs along the house wall the restraint covers the other three, 36 feet. Plastic or aluminum edging comes in straight sticks with spikes sold separately, so divide the free perimeter by the stick length on the product and buy the spikes the manufacturer calls for. The permanent alternative is a concrete curb or a mortared border, which the concrete calculator will size as a long thin slab.

One more edge case, in the literal sense. If the patio is cut into a slope, the uphill side ends up as a soil face, and once that face is more than a foot or so high it is a retaining wall with its own base, drainage and block count. The retaining wall calculator handles that, and it is worth running before the paver order, because a wall usually moves the patio edge.

Polymeric sand: a typical coverage, not a promise

Joint sand is the last material on the list and the hardest to put a number to, because it fills the gaps between pavers rather than covering an area. A 4x8 patio has far more joint per square foot than a 24x24 one, and a tumbled paver with a 3/8 inch joint takes several times the sand of a crisp-edged one at 1/8 inch.

Manufacturers print a coverage figure on the bag, and that is the one to use. As a typical range, a 50 lb bag of polymeric sand covers somewhere around 50 to 100 square feet of tight-jointed pavers and perhaps 20 to 40 square feet of wide-jointed or tumbled ones. On a 12x12 patio with tight joints that works out to two or three bags; the same patio in a wide-joint product could be anywhere from four to eight. Buy one bag more than the arithmetic says, because a joint that runs short halfway across the patio means a second activation on a surface that has already been wetted, and the paver base and bedding guide explains why that second pass is where the haze comes from.

Choosing a paver size for a given patio

The table makes one thing obvious: the paver count on a 20x20 patio runs from 108 to 1,944 depending on the unit. That is a labor difference as much as a material one. Each 4x8 goes down fast but there are eighteen of them to every 24x24, and the 24x24 is a two-person lift that needs to be set once and not shuffled.

Fit is the quieter factor. A 12x12 unit lands on every whole-foot dimension in the table with no cut on a straight lay. A 4x8 fits every even-foot length along its 8 inch side and every foot along its 4 inch side, so a 10x12 or a 12x16 in 4x8s needs only the running-bond half pavers. A 16x16 fits 8, 12, 16 and 20 foot dimensions and leaves a half-unit cut along a 10 or 14 foot side; a 6x9 fits every whole foot along its 6 inch side but only the 12 foot dimension along its 9 inch side; a 24x24 wants even feet both ways. None of this changes the counts, which already carry the waste, but it decides whether the cuts are a tidy row of halves or a ragged line of odd pieces along the most visible edge.

Thickness is a load question. The 60 mm unit is the patio paver; anything a car will drive on wants 80 mm and a deeper base, which is a driveway build rather than a patio one. And if the real question is paver patio or poured patio, the concrete for a patio slab guide prices the slab over the same 10x10 to 20x20 range so the two can be compared on the same footprint.

A 12x12 patio in 12x12 pavers, from the table to the order

The widget above is set to this patio, so the figures can be checked against it.

• Pavers: 144 square feet, 144 bare pavers, 156 in running bond with 8 percent. Two pallets at the typical coverage, three if the tag on the 12x12 product covers less than that.
• Base: 1.78 cubic yards compacted at 4 inches for the footprint, about 2.49 tons at 1.4 tons a yard, before the overhang for the edge restraint and the allowance for compaction. Order it by the ton through the gravel calculator once both are added.
• Bedding sand: 0.44 cubic yards of coarse concrete sand, no allowance needed.
• Edge restraint: 36 feet with one side against the house, 48 feet freestanding, plus spikes.
• Polymeric sand: typically two or three 50 lb bags for tight joints, checked against the bag.

The cubic yards to tons guide covers the conversion for the base and the sand if the supplier quotes one and you measured the other. Order the pavers last, after the base is in and the footprint is confirmed, because a base that ended up 6 inches wider than planned is cheap to cover and a paver order that is 40 short is a second delivery charge.