YardPea gravel is the friendliest-looking ground cover you can buy, and the easiest to get wrong by a bag or two. A path that looks generous on delivery day can thin out within a month as the stones settle into the base, while a patio ordered with too much margin leaves a small mountain of stone by the fence that nobody wants to shift. The fix is a short piece of arithmetic: area times depth, converted into cubic yards, then into tons or bags depending on how your supplier sells it. This guide walks through that sum for the projects pea gravel actually suits, with a coverage chart, a project chart and a full worked example. For the one-step answer, the Pea Gravel Calculator takes your length, width and depth and returns cubic yards, tons and bags together.
The short answer
One cubic yard of pea gravel covers 162 square feet at 2 inches deep, or 108 square feet at 3 inches. A 10 x 10 ft patio at 3 inches deep therefore needs about 0.93 cubic yards before any allowance, and about 1.02 cubic yards once you add the usual 10 percent for settling, which is roughly 1.38 tons or about 55 bags of 0.5 cu ft. Paths need less depth than patios, play areas need more, and the chart below gives the right depth for each job before you start measuring.
How deep should pea gravel be?
Depth is where most pea gravel orders go wrong, because the stones are round and they move. Too thin and the fabric or soil shows through in weeks; too deep and the surface feels like a beach and chairs wobble. These are the depths that hold up in practice:
| Project | Depth | Why this depth |
|---|---|---|
| Garden path or walkway | 2 to 3 in | Comfortable to walk on and cheap to top up |
| Patio or seating area | 3 to 4 in | Deep enough to hide the base and steady chairs |
| Garden bed topping | 2 in | Neat finish without burying plant crowns |
| Dog run | 4 in | Stands up to digging and daily traffic |
| Play area | 4 in | Softer landing and room for displacement |
| Fire pit surround | 3 to 4 in | Steady footing with good drainage |
Whatever the project, put the stone over a compacted base and landscape fabric, and hold it in with a firm edge of steel, timber or stone. Without an edge, pea gravel wanders into lawns and beds a little every week, and the area thins out no matter how carefully you measured. Also note what pea gravel is not for: driveways and parking spots. Round stones roll under tyres and rut quickly, so a driveway wants angular crushed stone that locks together. The Gravel Calculator sizes that kind of job.
Coverage: how far one cubic yard goes
A cubic yard is 27 cubic feet, so coverage is a straight division: 27 cubic feet spread over a given depth. The table below is the whole calculation in one place.
| Depth | Area one cubic yard covers |
|---|---|
| 1 in | 324 sq ft |
| 2 in | 162 sq ft |
| 3 in | 108 sq ft |
| 4 in | 81 sq ft |
| 6 in | 54 sq ft |
To work out any project by hand: multiply length by width to get square feet, multiply by depth in feet, divide by 27 to get cubic yards, then add 10 percent for settling. That last step is not optional padding. Pea gravel sinks into its base in the first few weeks, and the top-up bags cost far more per yard than the bulk order did.
Project chart: yards, tons and bags
Every figure below already includes the 10 percent settling allowance, and uses the calculator's own figures: about 1.35 tons per cubic yard, and 54 bags of 0.5 cu ft per cubic yard. Round up to whole bags when you order, and to whole yards for a bulk delivery.
| Project | Size and depth | Cubic yards | Tons | Bags (0.5 cu ft) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Garden path | 3 x 20 ft at 2 in | 0.41 | 0.55 | 22 |
| Walkway | 3 x 30 ft at 3 in | 0.92 | 1.24 | 50 |
| Patio | 10 x 10 ft at 3 in | 1.02 | 1.38 | 55 |
| Garden bed | 4 x 12 ft at 2 in | 0.33 | 0.44 | 18 |
| Dog run | 5 x 20 ft at 4 in | 1.36 | 1.83 | 73 |
| Play area | 12 x 12 ft at 4 in | 1.96 | 2.64 | 106 |
If your project falls between two rows, or is an odd shape, measure it in rectangles, work out each rectangle separately and add the results. For circles, use 3.14 x radius x radius for the area and carry on the same way. The Pea Gravel Calculator handles rectangles, circles and triangles directly if you would rather not do it by hand.
Bags or bulk delivery?
The crossover point is roughly one cubic yard. Below that, bags are usually the better buy: you carry exactly what you need, there is no delivery fee, and a spare bag lives neatly in the garage for top-ups. At 54 bags per cubic yard, though, the arithmetic turns fast. A 10 x 10 patio at 3 inches is 55 bags, which is a lot of lifting and a lot of plastic. For anything over a yard, a bulk delivery dumped on a tarp is cheaper per yard and far less work, as long as you have somewhere a truck can reach. One practical middle path: order the bulk of the job loose and keep two or three bags back for the settling top-up a month later, when the surface has found its level.
Worked example: a 10 x 10 ft patio at 3 inches
Take a square patio, 10 ft by 10 ft, to be covered 3 inches deep in pea gravel.
- Area: 10 x 10 = 100 sq ft.
- Volume: 100 x 0.25 ft = 25 ft3.
- Cubic yards: 25 / 27 = 0.93 yd3.
- With 10% settling allowance: 0.93 x 1.1 = 1.02 yd3.
- Weight: 1.02 x 1.35 = 1.38 tons.
- Bags: 1.02 x 54 = 55 bags of 0.5 cu ft.
So the order is one cubic yard loose, or 55 bags. Check it against the coverage table as a sanity check: one cubic yard at 3 inches covers 108 sq ft, and this patio is 100 sq ft, so just over a yard with the allowance is exactly right. If the patio had a planting bed cut out of one corner, subtract that bed's area before you start and the same steps give the smaller figure.
Before you spread it
Three jobs done before the stone arrives save a rebuild later. First, level and compact the base, because pea gravel copies every dip underneath it. Second, pin landscape fabric over the base and trim it inside the edging, so the stone cannot sink into the soil and weeds stay down. Third, set the edging before the delivery, not after, since a pile of loose stone is much harder to edge around than an empty bed. Once the stone is down, rake it level, walk it in for a day or two, then top up the thin spots; that second pass is what makes the surface look finished rather than freshly dumped. For a stone with a different look, the River Rock Calculator sizes larger decorative stone the same way.