Brick Paver Patterns and Laying Technique

A brick paver patio or walkway stands or falls on two choices you make before the first brick goes down: the pattern, and the way each brick meets the sand. Get the pattern right and the surface locks together under feet and tires. Get the laying technique right and the joints stay tight for years. Get either one wrong and the surface wanders, rocks, and weeds up within a season. The good news is that neither choice is hard once you know what each pattern is for and how the bricks are supposed to be set.

Short answer: Pick herringbone if cars will drive on it, running bond if it is your first job, and basketweave for a traditional look on foot traffic only. Lay a compacted gravel base, screed 1 inch of bedding sand, set the border first, then set each brick with the click-and-drop method, working from a fixed edge and checking alignment with a string line every few rows. Sweep joint sand in, compact, and top the joints up after the first rains.

Last updated: November 5, 2026

Contents

• What Is a Brick Paver?
• The Four Brick Paver Patterns
• Which Pattern Fits Your Project?
• Before You Lay a Single Brick
• How to Lay Brick Pavers, Step by Step
• Starting Each Pattern Without Wandering Off
• Mistakes That Ruin a Brick Paver Job
• DIY or Hire a Pro?
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Sources

What Is a Brick Paver?

A brick paver is a small, dense paving unit made to be laid dry on a sand bed, with no mortar holding it in place. The joints are filled with sand, the edges are held by a restraint, and the whole surface stays put through interlock and weight. Most brick pavers run about 4 by 8 inches, which means roughly four and a half of them cover a square foot, a handy number when you are counting an order.

Two kinds of brick paver sit on the shelf, and the difference matters more than the color chart suggests. Clay brick pavers are fired clay, the same material as a house brick, with the color running all the way through the unit, so a chipped corner shows the same tone as the face. Concrete pavers are cast concrete molded to brick size and shape, and they come in a wider range of colors and surface textures. Both lay the same way on the same sand bed. Clay holds its color a little more stubbornly over decades, while concrete gives you more choice and usually a lower price per unit. Concrete pavers also behave like any cast concrete surface when it comes to cleaning, so our concrete cleaning guide applies to them almost word for word.

Attribute	Clay brick pavers	Concrete pavers
Material	Fired clay, same as a house brick	Cast concrete molded to brick size
Color	Runs through the whole unit, fades slowly	Surface and integral color, widest range
Size consistency	Small natural variation, plan for wider joints	Very uniform, tighter joints possible
Typical unit size	About 4 by 8 inches	About 4 by 8 inches, plus many other sizes
Best for	Traditional looks, paths and patios that age gracefully	Driveways, modern designs, tight budgets

One size check decides whether your pattern will work at all, and it is the check most first-timers skip. Herringbone and basketweave only close up neatly if the paver is truly modular, meaning its length is exactly twice its width. A 4 by 8 inch brick qualifies. A brick that measures 4 by 7 and three quarters does not, and no amount of fiddling will make the pattern meet cleanly at the corners. Measure three or four bricks from the batch before you buy, not one, and ask the supplier for the true dimensions rather than the nominal size on the tag.

The Four Brick Paver Patterns

Four patterns cover nearly every brick paver job a house will ever need. Each one has a job it does best, a price in wasted cuts, and a difficulty level, and the table below puts those side by side so you can compare them in one glance. The waste figures come from a pattern guide that tracks cut loss per layout, and the load ratings follow the way installers talk about interlock: how well the field passes a load from one brick to its neighbors instead of letting a tire shear along a straight joint.

Pattern	Interlock under load	Extra to order (waste)	Difficulty	Best use
Running bond	Moderate	5%	Easy	Walkways, first DIY job, patios
Stack bond	Low	5%	Easy	Modern patios, foot traffic only
Basketweave	Moderate	5 to 8%	Easy	Traditional patios and walkways
90-degree herringbone	High	10%	Moderate	Patios, high-traffic paths
45-degree herringbone	Highest	15%	Hard	Driveways, premium patios

Running bond

Running bond is the brick-wall pattern: rows of bricks with each course offset by half a brick. It is the fastest pattern to lay, it hides small size differences between bricks, and it wastes the least material, because the only cuts are half bricks at alternating row ends, and each cut gives you two usable halves. Its long sight lines can stretch a narrow walkway visually, which is a genuine trick on a small path. Its weak point is direction. Continuous joint lines run across the field, so under regular vehicle traffic it does not lock together as strongly as herringbone. Fine for patios, pool surrounds, and paths. A compromise choice for driveways.

Herringbone, 90 degrees and 45 degrees

Herringbone lays rectangular bricks in a zigzag, each unit set at a right angle to its neighbors, so the field has no long straight joint lines in either direction of travel. That is exactly what you want under vehicles: braking and turning forces meet an interlocked mesh instead of a seam they can shear along. The 90-degree version keeps cuts manageable. The 45-degree version looks the most dynamic and is the standard recommendation for driveways, but it makes triangular offcuts along every edge, so budget a full 15 percent waste and expect a lot of saw time. A brick mason quoted on a This Old House project called herringbone the oldest pattern known to brick paving, and it is still the one pros reach for when tires are involved.

Basketweave

Basketweave pairs bricks in alternating horizontal and vertical sets, which reads like a woven basket and suits brick better than almost any other material. It only works with truly modular bricks, length exactly twice width, and it is nearly as fast as running bond on square-edged areas. It belongs on foot-traffic surfaces. Under a car it does not interlock the way herringbone does, so keep it off the driveway.

Stack bond

Stack bond lines the bricks up in a plain grid, joints lined up in both directions. Cutting is minimal and the look is crisp and modern, which suits large-format slabs and contemporary patios. Its weakness is structural: with no interlock at all, it should stay on foot-traffic areas, and precise joint alignment is unforgiving of sloppy laying. Every wobble shows.

Every pattern gets a border, and the border is not decoration. A soldier course, bricks stood on end around the perimeter, does three jobs at once: it frames the field visually, it gives the pattern a clean line to die into so you get fewer awkward slivers, and it finishes the edge where the restraint locks the whole system together. A darker border course is the simplest high-return design move in paving.

Which Pattern Fits Your Project?

Pick a pattern by working through three questions in order, the way installers do. First, what does the surface carry? Vehicles push you toward herringbone or another high-interlock layout. Foot traffic opens the whole catalog. Second, what is the shape of the area? Long narrow walkways suit running bond, which stretches them. Square patios take basketweave or herringbone well. Big rectangles with a lot of edge suit 90-degree herringbone, because the cuts stay manageable. Third, how much cutting and fiddling are you willing to do? A first job goes smoother in running bond or basketweave. Forty-five-degree herringbone is a second or third project, not a first, unless you are patient and good with a saw.

Two practical checks come before you order. Lay a test patch on your driveway first, big enough to see the pattern at full size, and live with it for a day. A pattern that looks busy on a sample board can look just right at patio scale, and the reverse happens too. Then buy all your pavers from one production lot. Color varies between dye lots, and a patio that mixes two lots shows it forever. That is another reason the waste figure matters: it is much better to have a dozen spare bricks than to order a second batch later.

Before You Lay a Single Brick

Call 811 at least two days before you dig, from anywhere in the country, and let the utility company mark buried lines. That call is free, and it is the one step that has no workaround. While you wait, mark the area with stakes and string, and set the slope so water runs away from the house. A quarter inch of fall per foot is the rule most guides use, which works out to about an inch of drop every eight feet. If the path or patio meets a house wall, a curb, or a sidewalk, measure from that fixed edge, because it becomes the reference line for everything that follows.

Count materials with the pattern in mind. Take the square footage, multiply by four and a half for standard 4 by 8 inch bricks, then add the waste figure from the table above: 5 percent for running bond, 15 percent for 45-degree herringbone. The bedding sand goes down 1 inch thick everywhere, which works out to about a cubic yard per 80 square feet of path. The gravel base is where the money and the work sit: roughly 4 inches of compacted crushed stone under a patio or walkway, and 6 to 8 inches under a driveway. If you want the arithmetic done for you, our paver base calculator works out the gravel and sand for the area and depth you enter.

Tools are simple, and most of them are already in a garage. You need a flat shovel, a wheelbarrow, a hard rake, a level, a rubber mallet or deadblow hammer, a mason’s chisel and a 3-pound hammer for splitting, a broom, string lines and stakes, a 2 by 4 screed board, and a plate compactor, which you can rent from most equipment yards. A wet saw or angle grinder with a diamond blade handles the edge cuts; our how to cut pavers guide compares the tools. Gloves, safety glasses, hearing protection, and a respirator for any dry cutting are not optional extras.

How to Lay Brick Pavers, Step by Step

The sequence below is the standard dry-lay method used for brick pavers on a sand bed, and it follows the same steps manufacturers print in their own installation guides. The base is the part that decides whether the surface stays flat, so if you want the full depth on excavation and base layers, our complete guide to laying pavers covers it in detail. This article stays in its own lane: the pattern choices and the brick-laying technique.

Starting Each Pattern Without Wandering Off

Every pattern has a starting move, and getting the first few bricks right is what keeps the rest of the field honest. The field is laid from a fixed straight edge, usually the house, working outward, and the border goes in first so the pattern has a clean line to die into.

Running bond starts with a full brick at the fixed edge, and the next row starts with a half brick, so the joints stagger by half a unit from row to row. If the joints from row to row drift to within an inch of each other on a curve, slip a half brick in to open the separation again. Basketweave starts on a chalk line snapped down the center of the sand bed. Lay three short rows to make a stepped pyramid in the middle of the edge, then work diagonally, filling in the steps until the surface is covered.

Ninety-degree herringbone starts at a corner with a pair of full bricks set at right angles, then a stepped leg of full bricks runs out from the corner, ending each leg with a half brick. The stepped legs are what keep the zigzag true. Forty-five-degree herringbone is the fussiest start of the four, and it has a trick worth knowing. Set a course of bricks on edge against the baseline as temporary spacers, then place the first pair of bricks at roughly 45 degrees, with the corner of the left-hand brick touching the spacers. Lay the first chevron, two courses at right angles to each other, and extend it along the baseline. The chevron pair checks itself: as long as the corner of each brick touches the baseline, the alignment must be right. A string line pulled along the outside corners of the second course confirms it, because every corner should just touch the taut string. Once the whole bricks are laid, pull the temporary spacers out, use them for the cut-in pieces along the edges, and cut in last. That order keeps the cut pieces large and the waste low.

Curves deserve a warning of their own. Gradual curves work fine, but a curve with a radius tighter than 5 feet forces wide gaps between the bricks, and no pattern hides that. If the design calls for a tight turn, widen the path or break the curve into short straight runs with a gentle angle between them.

Mistakes That Ruin a Brick Paver Job

Most brick paver failures show up as one of five symptoms, and each one points at a specific step that was skipped. Read the symptom, find the cause, and the fix usually writes itself.

Symptom	Likely cause	Fix
Pattern wanders off line	No string line, or started from a loose edge instead of a fixed one	Pull string lines every few rows and lay from the house or curb outward
Bricks rock underfoot	Bedding sand disturbed, or screed left uneven	Lift the rocking bricks, re-level the sand with a trowel, and reset them
Edges spread outward	Edge restraint missing, or spikes too shallow	Install a restraint with spikes at least 8 inches deep every 2 to 3 feet
Surface dips after rain	Base stone not compacted in thin lifts, or base too shallow for the load	Prevention only: rebuild the base in 4-inch lifts; a dipped field has to come up
Joints widen and weeds move in	Joint sand washed out and never topped up	Re-sand the joints and top up after rains until they stay full

The dip is the one failure with no cheap fix, which is why the base gets so much attention in every installation guide. A pattern mistake can be pulled up and relaid in an afternoon. A base mistake means lifting the whole field.

DIY or Hire a Pro?

A small patio or walkway in running bond or basketweave, on flat ground with no drainage trouble, is a very reasonable first DIY project. Two weekends, a rented compactor, and a helper feeding you bricks will get most garden paths done, and the work is forgiving: a brick laid wrong can be lifted and reset in seconds. That is the real advantage of dry-laid pavers over poured concrete. Nothing sets until you sweep the sand in.

Call a pro when the job has one of these features: a driveway in 45-degree herringbone, a large area where a wandering pattern would show for years, a slope or drainage problem that needs grading, or heavy clay soil that needs a deeper base than the standard depths. The Brick Industry Association publishes detailed technical notes for professionals, and a good installer will be working from that kind of guidance rather than guessing. If you hire, ask how deep the base will be, how it will be compacted, and what pattern they recommend for the load. The answers tell you quickly whether you are talking to someone who lays pavers or someone who just owns a compactor.

After the job, the surface needs little: keep the joints full of sand, sweep leaves off before they stain, and wash the field now and then. Our driveway cleaning guide covers washing for the whole driveway, brick field included, and it is the right next read once the pavers are down and settled.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

• ORCA, Brick Paver Installation Guide
• Alliance Pavers, Paver Patterns and Laying Styles Explained
• Paver Calculators, Paver Patterns Guide: Layouts, Difficulty and Waste Factors
• Pavingexpert, Setting Out 45-Degree Herringbone
• Cambridge Pavingstones, Installation Instructions
• Family Handyman, How to Build a Brick Walkway in the Garden