Design Your Own Patterns With Our Standard Sizes

Design inspiration can come from many places. Whether it’s from a picture online or visiting a home and garden show in person, knowing how to create your own paver patterns with standard sizes is essential in helping to make your design vision come to life.

Determining the Ratios

If your paving doesn’t come in the sizes of the pattern that inspires you or your customer, you can re-design it with standard sizes. To do that, take the smallest square in the pattern as a base unit size, and create ratios to all of the other sizes (how many of the small units it would take to make the other sizes).

Then, apply this logic to all of the sizes in the pattern. In a typical French pattern, the smallest size is 8″ x 8″ – all other sizes are based on multiples of 8″.

• An 8″x 8″ paver would be 1 Unit by 1 Unit in that example.
• Another size in that pattern is 16″ x 24″, which would be 2 units by 3 units (or a 2:3 ratio).

Polycor Pavers start at 12″ x 12″ for standard sizes, so that would constitute the smallest unit in a pattern. You will notice that is the smallest unit for the patterns in the library of examples provided below.

Selecting the Right Size Paving to Make the Pattern

As long as the pavers you select have sizes available in the same ratio, you can achieve the same aesthetic with other sized products. The natural stone option referenced above can be used to lay the same pattern, but in a larger format.

Example:

• Dimension: 12″ x 24″, Ratio: 1/2 Unit by 1 Unit
• Dimension: 24″ x 24″, Ratio: 1 Unit by 1 Unit
• Dimension: 24″ x 36″, Ratio: 1 Unit by 1-1/2 Units

Broader Application

Knowing these basic principles, you can apply them to any pattern. Below is a traditional French pattern (Lyon) that has been scaled up to accommodate large format pavers. Converting the smallest size to 12″ x 12″ and using multiples of twelve delivers the same pattern and overall aesthetic in a larger format.

Patterns can be made with both regular and large format pattern pavers. The number of repetitions per pallet is calculated and shared on the Paver Layout Designs cut sheets (please refer to the Resources section on the Pavers page for more information). Standard, pre-palletized stone pattern pavers from Polycor come in 3 sizes – 12″ x 24″, 24″ x 24″, and 24″ x 36″.