Brick Calculator
Find how many bricks you need for a brick wall, a garden wall, or brick veneer on a house. Enter the wall, subtract doors and windows, and choose your brick size to see the bricks and bags of mortar mix to buy. For brick pavers on a patio or path, use the Paver Calculator.
Add more walls, or subtract openings such as doors and windows.
- Choose US or Metric. You can still change the unit of any single field.
- Enter the wall. For a single wall, choose Rectangle and enter the wall's Length and Height. For the veneer on all four sides of a house, a garage, or a shed, choose Room walls. For a gable or a wall with a sloped top, add a Triangle section to the rectangle below it.
- Use Add section for more walls. To leave out doors and windows, add a section for each one and set it to Subtract. Use Quantity for several of the same size.
- Choose the Brick size. For another size, choose Custom size and enter the actual length and height of the brick.
- Check the Waste allowance. It starts at 10% and applies to both the bricks and the mortar.
- Optionally, enter the Bricks per mortar bag printed on your mortar, and a Brick price and Mortar price to estimate the cost. You can price bricks each, per 1,000, or by area.
Dimension fields accept whole numbers, decimals, fractions, and mixed
numbers, such as 20, 7.5, 3/8, or
7 5/8.
How many bricks you need
The calculator finds the area of the wall, subtracts the openings, adds the waste allowance, and divides by the area of one brick plus its share of the mortar joints:
Total area = net wall area × (1 + waste % ÷ 100)
Bricks = total area ÷ ((brick length + joint) × (brick height + joint)), rounded up
Bags of mortar = total area ÷ area of one brick with joints ÷ bricks per bag, rounded up
This is the wall-area method in the Brick Industry Association (BIA) Technical Note 10, Dimensioning and Estimating Brick Masonry: take the wall area, less the windows, doors, and other openings, and divide by the face of one brick with its joints. The bags of mortar are counted from the bricks you lay before rounding up, because mortar is used as you lay the bricks. With several sections, the calculator adds the sections set to Add and subtracts those set to Subtract. The area of each shape is calculated as follows:
| Shape | Area |
|---|---|
| Rectangle | length × height |
| Room walls | 2 × (length + width) × height |
| Triangle (base and height) | base × height ÷ 2 |
| Known area | the area you enter |
For Room walls, measure the outside of the building. The four corners are then counted twice, so the brick count comes out slightly high.
The count is for a wall one brick thick (a single wythe, or half-brick wall) laid in running bond or stack bond, the usual brick veneer and garden wall. Patterns with headers, such as English or Flemish bond, use a different number of bricks.
Brick sizes
The calculator lists common sizes for each region. The brick count depends only on the face of the brick, its length and height, so the width doesn't change it.
| Brick | Face | Face with joints |
|---|---|---|
| Modular (US) | 7 5/8 × 2 1/4 in | 8 × 2 5/8 in, or about 6.86 bricks per ft² |
| Queen (US) | 7 5/8 × 2 3/4 in | 8 × 3 1/8 in, or 5.76 bricks per ft² |
| King (US) | 9 5/8 × 2 5/8 in | 10 × 3 in, or 4.8 bricks per ft² |
| Utility (US) | 11 5/8 × 3 5/8 in | 12 × 4 in, or 3 bricks per ft² |
| 215 × 65 mm (UK and Ireland) | 215 × 65 mm | 225 × 75 mm, or about 59.26 bricks per m² |
| 230 × 76 mm (Australia and New Zealand) | 230 × 76 mm | 240 × 86 mm, or about 48.45 bricks per m² |
US sizes use the dimensions in BIA's Technical Note 10 with 3/8 in joints. The name and size of a brick can vary by manufacturer, so measure your brick. If it differs, or for another size such as Standard, Norman, Roman, or Engineer, or for 1/2 in joints, choose Custom size and enter the actual length and height. If you enter a nominal size that already includes the joint, such as 8 × 2 2/3 in for a modular brick, set the mortar joint to 0, or the count will come out low.
BIA's table gives 675 modular bricks per 100 ft². The calculator gives about 686, because BIA counts each brick at its nominal 8 × 2 2/3 in, while the calculator uses the actual size plus the joint.
For 73 mm high UK bricks, or Australian bricks 50, 62, or 70 mm high, choose Custom size. New Zealand bricks are 70 mm wide but have the same 230 × 76 mm face, so use the 230 × 76 mm size.
For thin brick that you stick to a wall, you can count the pieces with the size that has the same face, but the bags of mortar don't apply. For a rowlock course or any course where the bricks show a different face, enter that face as a Custom size and work it out as a separate wall.
How many bags of mortar you need
The calculator lists bags of mortar mix, the premixed sand and cement that only needs water. A bag lays this many bricks:
| Brick | Bricks per bag | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Modular | 80 lb: 35, 60 lb: 26, 40 lb: 18 | Sakrete Mortar Mix Type N technical data sheet |
| 215 × 65 mm | 20 kg: 24 | Tarmac Blue Circle Quality Assured Mortar data sheet |
| 230 × 76 mm | 20 kg: 20 | Cement Australia Trade Mortar |
These are guides, and they vary by product and how the bricks are laid. Sakrete's figures are for standard bricks and allow nothing for waste. Quikrete says an 80 lb bag of its Mortar Mix lays up to 37 standard bricks. Tarmac's figure is for bricks laid frog up in a wall one brick thick, so bricks without a frog lay more per bag. Cement Australia's figure is for 110 mm wide bricks, so New Zealand's 70 mm wide bricks lay more per bag. Check the bag you buy, and if it differs, enter its number as the Bricks per mortar bag.
The mortar data sheets above give a number only for standard bricks, so the calculator doesn't list bags for Queen, King, and Utility bricks. Check the bag or ask your supplier how many of your bricks one bag lays, and enter it as the Bricks per mortar bag.
For masonry cement that you mix with sand, BIA says masons often use 8 bags for 1,000 modular bricks, a very rough guide that includes some waste. Enter 125 as the Bricks per mortar bag to count those bags, and buy the sand separately.
Extra bricks and mortar for waste
The waste allowance starts at 10%, following Cement Australia's mortar calculator, which adds 10% to both the bricks and the mortar. It covers cut bricks at the ends of the wall and around openings, breakage, and spilled mortar.
BIA's Technical Note 10 adds at least 5% for bricks. For a straight wall with few corners and openings, you can lower the allowance toward 5%. For a wall with many corners or openings, raise it.
Examples
A brick wall
A wall 20 ft long and 8 ft high is 160 ft², or 176 ft² with 10% added. A modular brick covers 8 × 2 5/8 in with its joints, or 7/48 ft², so 176 ÷ 7/48 = 1,206.9, and you need 1,207 bricks. For mortar, 1,206.9 ÷ 35 = 34.5, so buy 35 bags of 80 lb mortar mix.
A wall with a door and two windows
Subtract two windows 4 ft × 3 ft and a door 3 ft × 6 ft 8 in from the same wall: 160 − 24 − 20 = 116 ft², or 127.6 ft² with 10% added. That's 127.6 ÷ 7/48 = 874.97, so you need 875 bricks and 25 bags of 80 lb mortar mix.
Pricing per 1,000 bricks
If the 1,207 bricks are $650 per 1,000, they cost 1,207 × $650 ÷ 1,000 = $784.55. The calculator prices the bricks you need and doesn't round up to a full 1,000.
Metric dimensions
A wall 10 m long and 1.8 m high is 18 m², or 19.8 m² with 10% added. With 215 × 65 mm bricks, each covering 0.016875 m², you need 1,174 bricks and 49 bags of 20 kg mortar. With 230 × 76 mm bricks, each covering 0.02064 m², you need 960 bricks and 48 bags.
FAQ
About 6.86 modular bricks, before waste. Each modular brick with its 3/8 in joints covers 8 × 2 5/8 in, or 21 in², so 144 ÷ 21 = 6.86, and 100 ft² of wall takes about 686 bricks. It's 5.76 for queen, 4.8 for king, and 3 for utility bricks.
About 59.26 for 215 × 65 mm bricks and 48.45 for 230 × 76 mm bricks, with 10 mm joints and before waste.
About 35 modular bricks per 80 lb bag of mortar mix, according to Sakrete, and about 24 bricks of 215 × 65 mm or 20 bricks of 230 × 76 mm per 20 kg bag. Check the yield printed on the bag you buy.
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