Paver Calculator

Common questions

How many pavers are in a square metre or a square foot?

It depends entirely on the paver, which is why the page asks for yours. A 200 by 100 mm paver laid tight covers 0.02 m², so 50 of them fit a square metre and a 10 m² patio takes 500. Allow for a 3 mm joint and each one occupies 203 by 103 mm instead, which is 47.8 to the square metre, so the same patio takes 479. A 400 by 400 mm slab is 6.25 to the square metre, and 10 m² of them is 63 once the part slab is rounded up. In imperial, a 4 by 8 inch brick is 32 square inches against the 144 in a square foot, so 4.5 bricks fill a square foot and 100 square feet takes 450 of them, or 431 once a 3 mm joint is counted. Type your own figures and the page works the same arithmetic on them.

How much waste should I allow?

The page adds the percentage you enter to the measured area before rounding the final count upward. It does not select a cutting allowance or calculate a pattern. For the 500-paver tight-face example, 5 percent gives 525, 10 percent gives 550 and 15 percent gives 575. Cuts, offcut reuse, curved edges and the chosen layout can change actual material use; supply the allowance appropriate to your own plan.

Should I use the pack coverage or the paver size?

Use whichever number your quote actually gives, which is the reason both are here. Coverage per pack is the figure on a manufacturer's pallet or price list, and it usually already includes the joint they expect, so the page takes it exactly as entered and infers no joint of its own. Paver size is the route when you know what you are laying but not how it is packed, or when you want to see how the joint changes the count. If you have both, try them one after the other: 20 pavers of 0.02 m² is a pack covering 0.4 m², and both routes then give 550 pavers and 28 packs for the same patio. If they disagree, check the stated face sizes, pieces per pack and coverage basis on your quote; a different joint is one possible reason.

Does the joint width really change how many pavers I need?

The area model adds the supplied joint once to each face dimension, as a repeating pitch in a continuous field. A 200 by 100 mm face with a 3 mm joint uses a 203 by 103 mm pitch, or about 47.8 per square metre, and a 10 m² area is 479 before allowance. This is not a count of placed rows or boundary cuts. In pack-coverage mode, no joint is added: the supplied coverage figure is used directly, so check its stated basis on your quote.

What does this calculator not cover?

It counts material for an area and stops there. It does not size a base, set a slope or specify an edge restraint, it does not tell you how to cut around a manhole or a step, and it has no opinion on whether a given paver suits what will be driven or walked on it. Those are decisions with a structure behind them and they belong with the supplier or whoever specifies the job. There is also no price list here: the cost is your own price per pack multiplied by the packs the page counted, because prices are local and they move.

Is anything uploaded, and does it cost anything?

Measurements and arithmetic stay in your browser, with no account required. Valid deliberate changes are saved locally; opening a saved draft does not rewrite it. Unusable, newer, removed or conflicting saved records are kept until you explicitly forget them. Your price is kept only on this page and is never added to the saved draft. The core calculation remains free to use.

Can I enter fractions and switch units without rounding my measurements?

Yes. Enter decimal numbers or simple fractions, with the unit chosen separately. Commas must group thousands, like 1,234.5; 1,2 is refused. Unit switches retain exact values, using a fraction when the converted decimal would repeat. Decimal result rows truncate at six places and use an ellipsis when more digits remain; the complete selectable calculation includes exact fractions. Pieces and packs use exact upward rounding.