Planning a Patio That Works: Design Tips & Inspiration from the Pros

Designing a patio starts with a lot of decisions—how big it should be, how it will be used, what materials to choose, and how to work with the existing landscape. This guide offers insights to help you plan a patio that’s both functional and visually appealing. You’ll find tips for creating a layout that fits your needs, selecting materials that offer long-term value, and avoiding common design mistakes that can drive up costs or limit the patio’s usability.

Design a Layout That Fits Your Lifestyle

Before you choose materials or colors, you need to plan the layout of your patio. It’s important to zoom out and consider your goals for the space, the natural conditions of your yard, and how you want to connect the patio to your other outdoor spaces.

How Will the Patio Be Used?

The way you plan to use your space should influence your layout. If you plan to entertain large groups, consider including multiple gathering zones with comfortable seating, or a large open space to accommodate a large dining table. If you want to enjoy quiet evenings with a few family members, an intimate seating area or fire circle will create a cozy vibe.

If you envision hosting game nights, leave room for games like corn hole or consider building an oversized board game or sports court using pavers. An outdoor lounge area with an exterior TV can provide entertainment for all ages.

If you’re a grilling enthusiast, decide if a freestanding grill is enough, or if a built-in kitchen with bar seating would better fit your vision.

And if you want to be able to use your patio year-round in a four-season climate, think about ways to add both heat sources and shade structures. You might consider a hot tub, freestanding patio heater, pergola, shade sail, or covered porch to extend the usability of your outdoor living area.

How Will You Handle Elevation Changes?

If your yard has a slope, you’ll need a plan for dealing with the elevation change. Segmental retaining walls made from durable concrete retaining wall blocks provide reliable slope stabilization. Refer to the  Concrete Masonry and Hardscapes Association’s guide to best practices for building segmental retaining walls to plan your design.

With a retaining wall, you can excavate a yard that slopes up or fill in a yard that slopes down to extend usable space. In larger yards with extensive slopes, a multi-tiered patio may be an option to maximize your design.

The Three-Tiered Backyard Retreat dealt with elevation changes in their yard by creating three patio tiers, each with a different purpose. The patio features Grand DISCOVER PAVERS in Allure with a border of ELEMENTS Paving Stones in Reflection. 

Instead of building a taller retaining wall (with the extensive engineering and prep that comes with that), you can break the elevation up into different levels. This also turns your space into a series of outdoor rooms for different functions, such as entertaining and games, intimate conversation areas, or cooking zones.

Tribute Splitface Wall Systems and Splitface Rectangular Caps in Timeless were used to design a three-tiered back patio to accommodate the sloped landscape of the Valley Vista project. The patio includes Grand XL DISCOVER PAVERS, ELEMENTS Paving Stones, and H₂O PRO Permeable Pavers.

How Will You Connect the Patio to Other Outdoor Spaces?

An isolated patio in the middle of your yard is less inviting than a patio with an attractive and clean pathway leading to it. A paver walkway is a beautiful and functional way to connect your patio to your driveway, garage, shed, or another section of your patio. Defining the pathway prevents visitors from wearing a path into your lawn or tracking mud onto the patio, and it can add to your home’s curb appeal when built with durable and attractive materials.

Elevation changes can also benefit from a concrete step or paver staircase that coordinates with the patio design.

The Grand Entrance project used Passageways^® Step Units to seamlessly connect spaces with different elevations.

County Materials offers many bullnose pavers and step units that are available in the same colors as our patio pavers, making it easy to unify the whole space. Paver staircases enhance pedestrian safety with their stable tread and uniform riser height, and they can help prevent erosion.

Choose the Right Surface Material

Once you have evaluated all of the factors that go into picking a layout, you can turn your attention to selecting hardscape materials. Your patio surface is the biggest visual and functional decision. Here’s a quick comparison of some of the most common options: 

• Concrete Pavers: Concrete pavers provide the most versatility in color, pattern, and texture options. They’re also easy to maintain, extremely durable, and simple to repair. Permeable pavers are an option if you have impervious surface limits.
• Natural Flagstone: Flagstones offer a high-end, organic look with great durability, but they are more limited in color options and are the most expensive paving option.
• Poured Concrete: Poured concrete is a durable and attractive paving option that can be customized with a variety of colors and textures with stamps and pigments.
• Gravel or Decomposed Granite: A gravel patio is an inexpensive paving option that is also permeable, but the surface is less stable for foot traffic and furniture, and it’s hard to maintain.

Make Design Choices That Enhance Your Investment

The best patio designs balance beauty, function, and longevity. Thoughtful choices not only create an outdoor space that looks stunning on day one, but also ensure it remains easy to maintain, comfortable to use across more seasons, and a lasting asset to your home. Here are some insights from our team on design elements that elevate your outdoor living experience while adding enduring value.

Choose Long-Lasting, Installer-Friendly Materials

Labor often accounts for a high percentage of the cost of a patio installation. Choosing premium hardscape products that are made to last will reduce the need for future replacement. Mixing pavers from different collections with different heights can also add to the complexity of the installation because the base needs to be graded at different levels.

Pavers from County Materials’ dimensionally compatible collections align perfectly in creative designs like this one featuring three different product lines.

County Materials’ dimensionally compatible pavers are designed for efficient installation with minimal cutting or regrading. Our dimensionally compatible pavers are manufactured with uniform 2 ¾-inch paver heights and in 4-inch increments that make installation simple even when mixing and matching pavers across product lines. We also offer documentation, design specs, and professional guidance to streamline installation.

Protect Your Investment with Factory-Sealed Pavers

Post-installation paver sealing has traditionally been the only way to provide enhanced protection from stains, weathering, and fading for concrete pavers. Sealing on site can be a time-consuming and unpredictable process, resulting in uneven protection. By contrast, factory-sealed pavers provide consistent coverage and better performance than traditional sealers, and they simplify the installation process.

County Materials has crafted a hybrid paver manufacturing system that bonds two protective layers—a factory-applied penetrating primer and sealer—to the pavers’ surface. Our Sentinel Sealed Technology^TM provides an ultra-smooth finish and refined texture—an ideal solution for pool decks, patios, and other barefoot-friendly spaces.

Design with Rectangles Instead of Curves

Curved patios can be visually striking, but they require additional cutting, which increases installation time and can generate significant material waste. Arcing edges can also reduce the usable square footage for furnishings. A more thoughtful way to soften the geometry of your outdoor living space is to introduce curves through surrounding landscape beds. This approach highlights the clean lines of the patio while creating a graceful, organic flow that complements the hardscape.

The eye-catching patios and walkways of the Rural Retreat demonstrate the creative potential of rectangular designs, which help minimize labor costs and reduce waste

Plan for Drainage

To maximize the service life of your patio and to prevent damage to your foundation or other structures, it’s essential to plan for proper drainage from the beginning. Make sure you or your contractor follow all CMHA installation guidelines to prevent costly repairs.

Get Creative with Colors and Patterns

Concrete pavers provide the most design flexibility of any paving option, with multiple options for colors, paver sizes and shapes, surface textures, and laying patterns.

Choose a Cohesive Color Scheme

No matter how you would describe your home’s architecture and vibe, there’s a paver palette that can complement it.

Give your space a modern feel. Go for the wow factor with edgy, complex, and unexpected paver patterns. Embrace the dynamic contrast of deep charcoal and soft beige hues or take a minimalist approach with a monochrome palette.

Craft a contemporary aesthetic with clean lines and refined textures. Add visual interest with varied paver patterns, elegant curves, and sharp angles. Make an impact with complex borders, trendy colors, and finishing touches like built-in lighting and wall accents.

For that lived-in feel from day one, use warm earthy tones and rough textures. Foster intimacy and comfort with smaller pavers in traditional laying patterns. Add high-contrast borders and wall caps to define rustic edges.

 Highlight the surroundings of your space with understated elegance. Use traditional laying patterns, simple borders, and right angles. Lean into the warmer side of the palette with subtly contrasting colors, and use rounded edges to soften the overall look and feel of your design.

Every County Materials paver is manufactured with Genesis Face-Mix Technology® to ensure lasting performance and vibrancy. Genesis Face-Mix Technology utilizes the highest quality concrete mixes and the richest color pigments to produce a resilient and luxurious surface layer bonded to the paver's base layer. You can expect our pavers to create time-tested spaces that your family and friends can enjoy for many seasons.

When selecting paver colors, think beyond aesthetics to how the space will be used and enjoyed. Lighter tones can create a cooler, more comfortable surface underfoot in sunny poolside settings, while richer, darker hues lend warmth and sophistication to intimate gathering areas such as fire pits and outdoor lounges. The right palette enhances both the atmosphere and the long-term performance of your space.

Play with Patterns

County Materials’ three-piece modular systems are designed for intuitive and secure installation without adhering to a complicated pattern. Each pallet contains a 1-to-1-to-1 ratio of each size paver. Our three-piece modular systems are: 

• DISCOVER PAVERS^® and Grand DISCOVER PAVERS^®
• VANTAGE PAVERS^® and Grand VANTAGE PAVERS^®
• Grand FUSION PAVERS™
• Grand TRANQUILITY PAVERS^®

Our Landscape Specifications Guide includes installation diagrams for all of our product lines to assist with patio planning.

If you prefer the look of a herringbone or running bond paver pattern, you can choose pavers that are available in a single size, such as Grand XL DISCOVER^® PAVERS and ELEMENTS^TM Paving Stones. Another creative option is to lay pavers diagonally across a patio instead of parallel to the borders.

The Prairie View project used a diagonal laying pattern to create a striking accent stripe that draws the eye across the pool.

Highlight Special Areas

You don’t have to choose just one paver pattern for your entire space. Using a different paver pattern in your outdoor kitchen, or around a fire pit or other intimate gathering spot can visually define distinct areas.

The Mountain View Terrace project used a herringbone paver pattern on the stoop, a straight laying pattern on the rectangular patio, and a diagonal laying pattern in the circular fire pit.

Define the Edges with Borders

The design versatility of concrete pavers really shines when it comes to designing borders. There are many ways to add contrast and dimension with borders.

Textural Contrast

A smooth textured patio can be surrounded with a textured paver border in matching or contrasting colors. Our VANTAGE PAVERS are a popular textured border choice when combined with smooth Grand DISCOVER PAVERS or Grand DISCOVER XL PAVERS. Similarly, you use the smooth DISCOVER PAVERS or ELEMENTS Paving Stones to surround a patio featuring the subtle textile-inspired texture of Grand FUSION PAVERS.

The Hunters Court Residence project plays with different textures to add visual interest to this paver walkway. Textured Grand FUSION PAVERS are lined with a smooth border of ELEMENTS Paving Stones.

Color Strategy

The colors in a border can be repeated as accent colors throughout the entire hardscape. Dark borders can add definition to a patio, while monochrome designs communicate understated elegance.

The Canyon Valley View project used the highly contrasting Vision and Reflection colors for a striking patio border.

Border Layouts

Borders provide structural support to the rest of the patio and are a great opportunity to add drama to your patio design. There are many layout options. Some of the most popular include:

• Soldier course: Long sides touching each other, with short sides forming the patio edge
• Sailor course: Short sides touching each other, with long sides forming the patio edge
• Double sailor or double soldier
• Sailor course in a 4x8 paver size with a second layer of pavers in 8x16 paver size

The Peaceable Hill project used an intricate paver pattern for its border, with a layer of DISCOVER PAVERS in Vision in alternating sizes and orientations and a double sailor course of ELEMENTS Paving Stones in Reflection.

Our ELEMENTS^TM Paving Stones in 4x8 and 8x16 and VANTAGE PAVERS 4x8 are two popular paver options that work with dozens of border layouts.

Add Architectural Elements

Your hardscape design doesn’t have to end with your patio. Architectural elements such as freestanding walls and columns can add visual interest and increased functionality.

Freestanding walls built with Unity Landscape Units line the fire pit area of the Suburban Drive project to create a more intimate seating area.

Some popular applications to consider include:

• Built-in seat walls around fire pits
• Raised garden beds
• Garden walls or columns at the edge of a patio to define the space
• Bar or outdoor kitchen

The Grill & Green Courtyard project has an outdoor kitchen and decorative columns that add functionality and visual interest to the patio.

Additionally, finishing touches like columns topped with lights, accent lighting in steps or walls, and decorative water or fire features can set the mood and can extend the usability of the patio beyond the summer. 

These fire feature columns at the Rural Revitalization project define the edge of the pool deck with style and create an alluring ambiance.

Move Forward with Your Dream Patio Design

With a clear vision and a solid understanding of your options, you’re ready to bring your patio design to life. County Materials offers the resources and support you need to move forward with confidence.

• Contact our Sales Team to discuss your project
• Request our Product Catalog for full color and size options
• Find a Contractor through our trusted partner network
• Find Where to Buy our concrete pavers and landscape products