The Complete Guide to Paver Estimating (+ Free Material Calculator)

A bad paver estimate doesn’t just lose you jobs. Win one at the wrong number and it eats the profit, and then some.

The story goes like this. A driveway gets bid at the per-square-foot number that “always works.” Then the crew finds out the pattern is 45° herringbone, the base needs to go deeper than planned, the old asphalt has to come out and go somewhere, and nobody put freight on the quote. By the last paver, the job has paid for itself and nothing else.

This guide walks through a paver estimate the way it gets built: measure, section, quantities, waste, freight, labor, equipment, overhead, margin. It teaches the method, not a price list. Material and labor prices swing too much by region, supplier and season for any article to hand you a number worth bidding on. Get quotes. Use your own production.

Want to skip the arithmetic? Work out the materials with the free paver material calculator →

The five parts of every paver estimate

1. Materials: pavers, base aggregate, bedding sand, joint sand, edge restraint, geotextile, and the freight to get them there
2. Labor: demo, excavation, base, screeding, laying, cutting, compaction, sanding, cleanup
3. Equipment: plate compactor, saw and blades, skid steer or mini excavator, laser level, plus haul-off and dump fees when there’s spoil or demo
4. Overhead: insurance, trucks, the yard, the office, software, and your own time selling and estimating
5. Profit: a number you decide on purpose, not whatever is left over

Step 1: Measure the job

Everything downstream multiplies off this number. Get it right.

• Break the area into simple shapes. Rectangles (length × width), triangles (base × height ÷ 2), circles (3.14 × radius²). Add them up. Subtract what you’re not paving, like a planter bed.
• Measure the perimeter on its own. You need linear feet for edge restraint and for any border. Only count edges that aren’t already held by a house wall, a curb or a slab.
• Walk the site for what the plan doesn’t show. Access for a skid steer, where the pallets can sit, slope and drainage, existing concrete or asphalt to remove, utilities, trees and roots.

Step 2: Know the section

A paver surface is a system of layers, and every layer costs money. From the bottom up, for a standard sand-set install:

1. Subgrade. The native soil, excavated and compacted. Soft or clay soils may need geotextile fabric and more base.
2. Base. Dense-graded crushed aggregate, placed and compacted in lifts. As a rule of thumb, walkways and patios take around 4 to 6 inches compacted, and driveways around 8 to 12. Poor soil, heavy traffic and freeze-thaw climates push you deeper.
3. Bedding layer. About 1 inch of coarse, washed concrete sand (ASTM C33), screeded smooth. It doesn’t get compacted until the pavers are on it.
4. Pavers. Around 2 3/8 inches (60 mm) is standard for patios, walks and most residential driveways. Heavier vehicle traffic calls for 3 1/8 inches (80 mm) or more.
5. Joint sand. Polymeric or regular jointing sand, swept in and compacted.
6. Edge restraint. Plastic or aluminum edging spiked down, or a concrete curb, so the field can’t creep.

Permeable pavers are a different section: an open-graded stone base, usually much deeper, with small clean stone for bedding and joints instead of sand. Mortar-set work over a slab is different again. Check the paver maker’s install guide and your local requirements. They beat any rule of thumb, including these.

Step 3: Turn the section into quantities

Here’s the math on one example: a 20 × 30 foot patio against the house. That’s 600 square feet, with 70 linear feet of open edge (two 20-foot sides and one 30-foot side; the house holds the other).

Pavers

Area × (1 + waste). Laid in 90° herringbone at 10% waste: 600 × 1.10 = 660 square feet. Then round up to what the supplier sells: full pallets, or layers if they’ll break one. Square feet per pallet and pieces per square foot are on the manufacturer’s spec sheet.

If there’s a border, take its area out of the field and order the border by the linear foot.

Base

Compacted cubic yards = area × depth in inches ÷ 12 ÷ 27. At 6 inches: 600 × 6 ÷ 12 ÷ 27 = about 11.1 cubic yards compacted.

Loose aggregate shrinks when you compact it, so order more than the compacted volume. An allowance of 15 to 25% is common, but it depends on the material, so ask your supplier. At 20%: 11.1 × 1.2 = about 13.3 cubic yards to order. If your yard sells by the ton, ask for the weight per cubic yard of that exact material and convert.

Bedding sand

One cubic yard covers 324 square feet at 1 inch deep. 600 ÷ 324 = about 1.9 cubic yards. Round up to 2. Screeding always uses a little more than the math says.

Joint sand

Coverage depends on paver size, joint width and paver thickness. Tumbled pavers and wide joints take far more than tight, square-edged units. Use the coverage chart on the bag for the paver you’re laying, and add a bag for top-ups.

Edge restraint

Linear feet of open edge, plus spikes at the spacing the edging maker calls for. In the example, 70 linear feet. Curves take flexible edging and more spikes.

Geotextile

If the soil calls for it: the full area, plus the seam overlap the fabric maker specifies, plus enough to turn up the sides of the excavation. Check it against roll widths so you’re not buying a roll for the last strip.

Excavation and haul-off

Dig depth = base + bedding + paver thickness. For the example: 6 + 1 + 2 3/8 ≈ 9.4 inches. 600 × 9.4 ÷ 12 ÷ 27 = about 17.4 cubic yards in the ground.

Soil bulks up once it’s dug. That’s swell, and depending on the soil it’s often 20 to 30% or more. At 25%, those 17.4 yards become about 21.8 cubic yards to haul. Price the loads, the trucking and the dump fees from the bigger number.

Step 4: Waste by pattern

More cuts, more waste. These are common starting points, not laws. Your own finished jobs will tell you more than any table.

Add a few percent more for curves, lots of obstructions or odd shapes. Allow for breakage, too. Chipped corners from delivery and handling happen on every job.

One more reason to order a little over: color matching. Pavers from different production runs can differ in shade. Leave the client some spares from the same run for future repairs, and put them in the price.

Step 5: Freight and delivery

Freight is the line that gets forgotten most. Suppliers charge it different ways: per load, per pallet, with small-load minimums, and extra for a truck-mounted forklift or a tight residential drop. Some charge a deposit on pallets and refund it when the pallets come back.

Get the delivery charge on the quote, in writing, per drop. Then count the drops. Pavers, base and sand often come from different yards on different days.

Step 6: Labor, from production

The best labor number comes from your own history: how many square feet a given crew actually installs in a day, on a given pattern, on a given kind of site. Price labor as crew-days, then turn crew-days into dollars.

• Break the job into phases. Demo, excavation, base, screed and lay, cuts, compaction and sand, cleanup. Each moves at its own pace.
• Adjust for the pattern. Herringbone and borders mean more time on the saw. Waste covers the pavers. It doesn’t cover the hours.
• Adjust for the site. Wheelbarrowing through a side gate is slower than dumping from a skid steer.
• Use burdened labor cost. Wages plus payroll taxes, workers’ comp, unemployment insurance and benefits. Social Security and Medicare alone add 7.65% on top of wages, before anything else.

An illustration with made-up round numbers: if your records say a crew lays 400 square feet a day on running bond but 300 on herringbone, the 600 square foot patio is a day and a half of laying one way and two days the other. That half day is real money, and you only see it if you track it. That’s what the daily report is for.

Step 7: Equipment

Own it or rent it, charge it to the job: plate compactor, wet saw and blades, skid steer or mini excavator, laser level, trailer, fuel. If you own the machine, charge a daily rate that covers the payment, the maintenance and its eventual replacement. A machine that isn’t in the estimate gets paid for out of profit.

Step 8: Overhead

Overhead is everything the company spends that isn’t tied to one job: insurance, trucks, the yard, the office, phones, software, marketing, and the owner’s time spent selling and estimating.

Work out your own rate. Add up last year’s overhead and divide by last year’s direct job cost. An illustration only: $200,000 of overhead on $800,000 of direct cost is 25%. Every estimate needs to carry that 25% on top of its direct cost, or the gap comes out of your profit.

Step 9: Margin, not just markup

Markup and margin are not the same thing. Mixing them up quietly costs money on every job.

• Markup is a percentage of cost. Say direct cost plus overhead comes to $20,000. A 20% markup makes the price $24,000.
• Margin is a percentage of price. That $24,000 price has a margin of $4,000 ÷ $24,000, which is 16.7%. Not 20.

To hit a target margin, divide instead of multiplying: price = cost ÷ (1 − margin). For a 20% margin on $20,000: $20,000 ÷ 0.8 = $25,000.

Pick your margin on purpose. Then put it on the estimate as a line, not as whatever’s left when the job is done.

The mistakes that eat the profit

1. Freight left off. Or priced as one drop when it’s three.
2. The wrong waste for the pattern. Herringbone at running-bond waste leaves you short, and a short order means another delivery charge.
3. Cut time ignored. The saw hours are labor, and they add up.
4. Patio base under a driveway. Vehicles need more base. Shorting it is how callbacks start.
5. Compaction and swell forgotten. Base ordered at compacted volume comes up short. Spoil priced at in-ground volume needs an extra load.
6. Wages instead of burdened cost. The hourly rate isn’t what an hour costs you.
7. Site access not priced. Tight access, no staging area, steep grade: all of it is time.
8. Markup mistaken for margin. See above.

Let the calculator do the arithmetic

The free paver material calculator does the quantity math for you. It works out materials only, with no prices, so take its numbers to your suppliers and get real quotes.

When you’re ready to estimate real jobs

Screed does this for real jobs. You lay out the areas and pick products from your catalog, and Screed sizes the pavers, base, bedding sand, joint sand and edge restraint from the same outline, waste included, priced from your own prices and your suppliers’ price lists. From the estimate you get a client proposal PDF that leaves out any option the client didn’t pick, a bill of materials as PDF or CSV, and draft purchase orders, one per supplier.

That’s the Starter plan: $80 a month for your whole company. See the plans →

Running the whole business, not just the estimate? How to run a $2M hardscape business with 5 people →