To price a paver patio so it actually makes money, add four layers — materials, fully-burdened labor, overhead, and profit — and apply the profit as a margin, not a markup. Most crews price off materials plus a per-square-foot guess, which silently drops the labor burden and overhead and turns a "winning" bid into a break-even (or losing) job.
The four layers of a patio price
A defensible patio price is built from the ground up, the same way you build the patio:
- Materials. Base gravel, bedding sand, pavers, polymeric sand, and edge restraint — with compaction and waste factored in. (See how to figure paver patio material.)
- Fully-burdened labor. Crew hours × your fully-burdened labor rate — the wage plus payroll taxes, workers' comp, and insurance, not the bare wage.
- Overhead recovery. Your monthly overhead (truck, insurance, phone, software, shop) spread across the hours you can actually bill.
- Profit. Applied as a margin on the price — not a markup on the cost.
A worked example: a 320 sq ft paver patio
Say a three-person crew builds a 320 sq ft patio. Using illustrative rates — $6/sq ft in materials, $22/hr average wage, a 32% labor burden, a production rate of 8 sq ft per crew-hour, $25/hr in overhead recovery, and a 25% target margin — the price builds up like this:
| Layer | Amount | How it's figured |
|---|---|---|
| Materials | $1,920 | 320 sq ft × $6 |
| Burdened labor | $3,485 | 40 crew-hrs × (3 × $22 × 1.32) |
| Overhead | $1,000 | 40 crew-hrs × $25 |
| True cost | $6,405 | materials + labor + overhead |
| Price at 25% margin | $8,540 | $6,405 ÷ (1 − 0.25) |
That's about $26.70/sq ft installed and roughly $2,135 of profit — on this crew's numbers. The "sounds about right" bid a lot of crews would write here is $18/sq ft, or $5,760. That number lands below the $6,405 it costs to build, so the job loses about $645 — and the crew never sees it, because they never added up the cost.
The two mistakes that sink patio bids
The example above only works because it counts two things gut-feel pricing skips:
- The labor burden. Paying $22/hr but pricing at $22/hr forgets payroll taxes, workers' comp, and insurance. Burdened, that worker costs about $29/hr — roughly 32% more. Across a season that gap is your profit.
- Markup pretending to be margin. Adding "25% for profit" onto cost is a 25% markup, which is only a 20% margin. If you want a 25% margin you divide by 0.75, not multiply by 1.25.
Skip the arithmetic
The free hardscape bid calculator does this whole build-up from your own rates — burdened labor rate, true cost, and the price to charge at your margin, shown as margin and markup both ways. Plug in your numbers and see where a per-square-foot habit has been costing you.