Brick Calculator
Type the wall, take the doors and windows out of it, and set the brick face and the mortar joint you are actually laying. A brick occupies its own face plus one joint along the top and one down the side, so a 215 by 65 mm brick on a 10 mm joint takes up a 225 by 75 mm module, which is 0.016875 square metres and 59.26 bricks per square metre. That single step is the one most brick pages skip, and it is worth about a fifth of the answer. The example this page opens on, a 10 by 2.4 metre wall with a 0.9 by 2.1 metre door, is 24 square metres gross, 1.89 square metres of door and 22.11 square metres of face: 1,310.22 bricks before waste, 1,375.73 with a 5 per cent allowance, 1,376 whole bricks and 3 packs of 500. Set the joint to 0 and the bare count on that same wall reads 1,582.11, which is what dividing by the brick face alone gives you. The wall is measured in metres or feet and the brick in millimetres or inches, each field keeps the number you typed rather than converting it behind your back, and the whole working can be copied in one press.
wall 10 m x 2.4 m = 24.00 m² gross opening 0.9 m x 2.1 m = 1.89 m² net wall 22.11 m² brick face 215 x 65 mm joint 10 mm laid module 225 x 75 mm = 0.016875 m² per m² 59.26 bricks bare count 1,310.22 waste 5% 1,375.73 → 1,376 bricks packs 3 of 500
22.11 m² of single-leaf face at 59.26 bricks per m²: 1,376 bricks including 5% waste, which is 3 packs of 500.
The wall
- Opening 1m wide bym tall, how many:
The brick and the joint
The joint is the step that separates this from dividing one area by another. A brick occupies its own face plus one joint along the top and one down the side, so the 215 by 65 mm face on a 10 mm joint becomes a 225 by 75 mm module, and the count follows from the module. Set the joint to 0 and you get the face-area answer, which is about a fifth higher. The wall keeps the metres or feet you typed and the brick keeps its millimetres or inches: nothing is converted behind your back. Up to 10 openings can be listed, each with the number of identical ones on its row, and walls up to 1,000 m a side are taken. The measurements are kept in this browser so the page opens where you left it, and Start over at the top of the page forgets them.
Common questions
- How many bricks are in a square metre?
- For the UK standard brick, 215 by 65 mm laid on a 10 mm joint, it is 59.26, which is why 60 per square metre is the figure quoted on every merchant's chart: one square metre of face takes 60 whole bricks. The arithmetic is the laid module rather than the brick. The joint goes on the top and on one side, so the brick occupies 225 by 75 mm, which is 0.016875 square metres, and one divided by that is 59.26. Change the joint and the answer moves: the same brick on a dry-laid face with no mortar at all is 71.56 per square metre. The Australian standard brick, 230 by 76 mm on the same 10 mm joint, is 48.45 per square metre. Every one of those numbers is on the screen with its working, so you can see which assumption produced it.
- How many bricks per square foot, and why is it not 6.75?
- Published charts say 6.75 modular bricks to a square foot. That figure comes from nominal modular coursing, where the module is taken as 8 by 2 2/3 inches: 144 divided by 21.33 is 6.75. This page multiplies out the face and the joint you actually type, and a 7 5/8 by 2 1/4 face on a 3/8 inch joint is an 8 by 2 5/8 module, 21 square inches, which is 6.86 per square foot, so one square foot takes 7 whole bricks. The gap is the bed joint the chart assumes, about 1.6 per cent. Queen size, 7 5/8 by 2 3/4 on the same joint, is 5.76 per square foot, and utility, 11 5/8 by 3 5/8, is 3.00. Type the joint your mason is laying and the page shows its working either way.
- Do the doors and windows come off the count?
- Yes, and you can see each one. Every opening is a width, a height and how many of that size there are, and the page prints each row, the total taken out and the net face that is left. The example opens with a 0.9 by 2.1 metre door: 1.89 square metres off a 24 square metre wall leaves 22.11. Up to 10 rows can be listed, and a row standing for several identical windows saves listing them one by one. If the openings add up to more than the wall, the page refuses and says so rather than handing back a negative area, because a takeoff that quietly went negative is worse than no number at all.
- How much waste should I add?
- That is your call, and the allowance is a field so the number stays visible instead of being baked into the total. Whatever percentage you type multiplies the count, and the figure before it stays on the screen beside the figure after it: on the example that is 1,310.22 bricks bare and 1,375.73 with the 5 per cent the page opens on. Allowances of roughly 5 to 10 per cent are common, because bricks arrive broken, get cut at the reveals and are laid by people rather than machines, and a wall with a lot of cutting wastes more than a plain run. Type 0 and the ordered figure is exactly the bare figure, rounded up to a whole brick.
- Is this the count for a single-leaf wall or a double one?
- A single leaf: one brick over the face of the wall, which is how a half-brick skin, a garden wall built in stretcher bond or the outer leaf of a cavity wall is counted. This page has no third dimension at all, so it cannot know how thick your wall is or how it is bonded, and it never guesses. A wall built two leaves thick takes the same count twice, so run it again for the second leaf or double the number. Bonds that turn headers to the face, English and Flemish among them, put more bricks in the same area than stretcher bond does, and the page cannot tell which one you are laying: it counts the face you described.
- Does it work out the mortar or the sand and cement?
- No. It counts bricks, coverage and packs, and says so. Mortar quantity depends on the joint, the frog in the brick, how full the perpends are laid and how much goes on the board and never onto the wall, and a number built on four assumptions you cannot see is not worth printing. What this page does give you towards it is the joint you entered and the laid module it produced, which is where any mortar estimate starts.
- Does it keep my numbers, and is anything sent anywhere?
- The arithmetic runs in your browser, there is no account and nothing is uploaded. The wall, the openings, the brick, the joint, the allowance and the pack size are kept in your own browser's storage so the page opens where you left it, and clearing your browser data clears them. Start over at the top of the page forgets them on the spot. If your browser blocks storage entirely, the page still works: it just opens on the example every time.
Exact arithmetic on the wall, openings, brick face and joint you enter: the joint is added to the brick in both directions before dividing, which is why the count is not simply area over face area. It counts material for a single-leaf face and is not a structural, bonding or code recommendation.