A Guide to Patio Costs
Patio Costs Guide 2025 | Craig McGibbon Ltd, Hertfordshire
Introduction
This guide presents real-world patio cost benchmarks for 2025, featuring Craig McGibbon Ltd’s Hertfordshire-based projects. It covers material prices, labour, access, excavation, waste disposal, and other factors that affect total cost.
A Summary of Cost Guide
Estimated costs for a 30m2 patio, for a variety of paving options.
Natural Sandstone Patio: £10,500
Sawn Sandstone Patio: £13,700
Premium Porcelain Patio: £12,500
Luxury Porcelain Patio: £13,600
These prices include VAT and are based on an area of 30m2
Prices include excavation, waste disposal, foundations and construction. It includes the supply of all materials, the labour for construction and any equipment hired e.g. mini-digger.
Factors That Affect Cost
Access to the Garden: Poor access e.g. < 0.9m wide diggers or steps can restrict equipment use and increase labour costs.
Extra Excavation: Excavation is typically 160mm deep. additional excavation increases costs.
Drainage of Surface: Linear drainage maybe required to manage surface rain water or snow melt.
Pack Size: Some brands or suppliers only supply in minimum packs size.
Complicated Shapes or Patterns: Complexity means more labour construction time.
Special Paving Products: Other natural stone types can be more expensive.
This Guide to Patio Costs covers popular types of paving across a number of size patio terraces.
These prices covers all the aspects of the construction of a new patio from supplying paving and materials, excavation and waste disposal costs and the construction and finishing of the patio terrace.
A Guide to Patio Costs
The following graph provides a guide to patio costs based upon the following assumptions:
The estimated costs include excavation, waste disposal, foundations and construction. It includes the supply of all materials, the labour for construction and any equipment hired e.g. mini-digger.
The paving selected can be characterised as;
Natural Sandstone - typical retail cost £36 per m2 - paving only
Sawn Sandstone - typical retail price £60 per m2 - paving only
Premium Porcelain - typical retail price £60 per m2 - paving only
Luxury Porcelain - typical retail price £70 per m2 - paving only
The size of each individual paving slab is 600x600mm laid in a brick bond pattern and rectangular design.
Patio Cost Guide
Additional Cost Considerations
There are numerous elements that can increase the costs of your patio terrace;
Access to the garden - the minimum flat access width required is 0.9m to allow materials to be moved in, in wheelbarrows but also a mini digger for excavation. This access should be slope and slope free. If access is tricky for example over steps, through a garage, steep, a long distance between front and back gardens, there will be an increase in costs.
Additional excavation - costs are based on a typical excavation, often removing an old patio, maybe extending into the lawn area to make it larger. Where there is additional excavation to reduce heights, or demolishing structures to create the area for the foundation footprint there will be an increase in costs for labour, plant hire and waste disposal.
Drainage of surface - the surface water from the rain needs to be managed. If the terrain does not allow the water to be drained off onto a lawn or flower beds then drainage needs to be added. Typically linear or point drains are added, these need to be connected to a soakaway or one installed. Large patios should also manage the surface water as lawns and borders would become saturated, so drainage would need to be installed.
Pack size -Whilst some paving is sold in per meter squared increments, some paving come is a specific pack size; for example 15.2m2. To minimise waste and cost, it is recommended the pack size with a 10% allowance for waste correlated to the size of patio to be laid.
Complicated shapes or patterns - the shape or pattern of a patio terrace will affect the costs, complicated shapes, patterns, curves and detailing will slow the construction productivity. As the construction will take longer, which often increases the labour costs independent of the material costs.
Special paving products - there maybe special paving products that fall outside the scope of this guide, which may increase the price. For example, reclaimed Yorkstone due to it’s nature of variable sizes and thickness between individual slabs makes it very labour intensive and therefore time consuming to construct a patio terrace from. Not only is the product more expensive than typical patio paving to purchase, the complexities with constructing the terrace would increase the labour costs by 4 to 5 times more than a typical patio product.
Aftercare Costs
Regularly cleaning your patio terrace will help maintain it’s good looks. This can be done with a stiff broom and hope pipe to sweep away any dirt.
Annually a solution of Lithofin Outdoor cleaner should be applied and a pressure washer with a wide spray used to clean the surface. In shady gardens it may also be necessary to treat with Lithofin Algex to control the appearance of algae.
Natural stone will naturally attract black spot lichen, it can be treated bi-annually with an appropriate black spot remover and a pressure washer with a wide spray to clean and revitalise the surface.
The treatment product costs are minimal. You can hire someone to clean the patio, costs would depend on the size and how ‘dirty’ the patio terrace was. We would charge around £525 per day for labour.
