What Are the Best Paver Patterns for a Savannah Backyard? (Basketweave, Checkerboard & Inlays)

Most people picture kind of the same thing when they hear the word patio. It’s usually a rectangle of pavers in a very simple repeating pattern that goes off the back of a porch. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just that it looks the same as a bunch of other ones you’ve seen before. If you’re going to spend good money on a backyard, the pattern is what will make your patio look like yours and not everybody else’s.

My name is Randy Thompson, and I am the founder of All Out Hardscapes & Lighting Solutions. Over the past 10 years my crews have built more than 150 patios, walkways, and outdoor living spaces across Savannah and the Coastal Lowcountry, including Wilmington Island and Savannah Quarters. We are the only Techo-Bloc Pro certified installer in the Lowcountry, which means the manufacturer has trained and tested us to their install standards, not just sold us pavers off a pallet.

We love the art value a patio can give you, the whole company feels that way. We love inlaying colors and doing basketweave designs with different paver sizes. We’ve done checkerboard patios and even a backyard laid out to look like Victory Lane because the owner is a NASCAR fan. Pattern is the biggest thing that determines how the entire yard looks and feels, and for some reason most companies don’t bring it up with their customers until the very end, after the size and the color are already decided.

Which Paver Patterns Should I Actually Be Choosing Between?

The three main patterns are basketweave, checkerboard, and a custom inlay. Everything else on a residential patio is a version of the same size paver laid in rows with each row being a little bit offset from the last. Basically like a brick wall, but on the ground. It’s called “running bond” and it’s not a bad pattern, it’s just the default. The three patterns above are what you pick when you want the patio to be a custom feature, not just a floor.

Before you decide, you should understand what we mean when we say “field”. The field is the main body of the patio, the surface inside whatever border you run around the edge. That’s where the pattern is, and that’s the only part of the patio that you customize.

Four things decide which of the three fits your yard.

• Measure the field, not the whole patio. Subtract the space for the table, the grill, and the seating. What is left is the place where you’ll always be able to see the pattern.
• Choose colors using your house, not a picture of someone else’s. The brick, siding, and trim you already own determine the two colors a checkerboard will be seen next to for decades.
• Decide between texture and contrast. Basketweave gives texture, but stays in one color family. Checkerboard gives you color contrast. An inlay gives one focal point and keeps everything else neutral around it.
• Look at the space from where you will stand and spend your time because from a second-story window a pattern can look like a grid, but when you’re sitting in a chair on the patio it can look more like a texture.

That’s because it’s not about the boldness of colors or patterns, it’s about scale. A pattern that looks amazing across a wide open field looks like four squares and a border on a small landing off the back door.

Basketweave: Three Paver Sizes Woven Into One Field

Basketweave sets pavers in pairs, then turns the next pair ninety degrees, so the whole thing looks like strips woven over and under each other like a basket. The traditional version of this only uses one rectangle size and repeats in a small pattern. What we build uses three different paver sizes inside the same weave, which stretches the pattern out far enough that your eye doesn’t really notice the repeat.

In a backyard, a three-size basketweave gives you visual flow without having to add a second color, which is great when the brick or the siding on a home is already busy and a bold two-color grid would just be too much. It also holds up really well under furniture, because the texture is in the actual layout, not in a color contrast that disappears under a rug.

Building a basketweave is not the same job as laying the same size pavers all the way across a patio. Every paver size has different dimensions, and the weave only works if the entire field is chalked and laid out from a center line before you start laying the pavers. If you start at the house and work outward, the little tiny mistakes compound, so by the time the crew reaches the far edge the pattern has shifted and all the borders are uneven. Nobody studies the middle of a patio. They look at the edges, where the field meets the border, and that is exactly where you’ll see the mistakes if it was laid out in a rush.

Basketweave is a great choice when the field is large enough to accommodate the pattern, when you want the patio to look custom without having to use a second color, or when you’ll have a table and chairs on it all year round.

Is a Checkerboard Patio Too Bold for My Backyard?

A checkerboard alternates two colors with the same paver size so it looks like a grid, just like a chess board. It’s the boldest of the three patterns, and people either love it or hate it at first sight.

Contrast is the whole designed effect, so a checkerboard pattern needs open field if it’s going to look right. Put a table, six chairs, and an outdoor rug in the middle of a small patio and the pattern you paid extra for is under the furniture and not working as the art you had intended it to be. But don’t give up on it, just run the checkerboard where the field stays open, or build it as a defined section inside a larger patio instead of doing it all the way from one wall to the other.

There is a backyard on our projects page that we built for a NASCAR fan, with a checkerboard section made to look like Victory Lane. When you look at it, keep in mind that in a couple of those photos the ground around the patio is unfinished. The homeowner called us back out the next week and we landscaped the whole backyard, so those pictures are actually only part way through the job.

A checkerboard is a great choice when the field stays open, when the two colors hold their contrast in full Savannah sun and in shade under a live oak, and when you want the patio itself to be the focal point.

Can I Put a Custom Inlay in My Patio, and What Does It Cost?

You can. An inlay is a design set down into the middle of the paver field, cut and fitted so it sits flush with the surface around it. Popular choices are team logos, military emblems, and a compass rose.

We don’t manufacture the inlay ourselves. We buy the pattern from a specialty manufacturer that only produces custom paver inlays, and they make the solid-color block the design is cut from. The rest of the field around it is made from Techo-Bloc pavers. The price of your inlay will depend on how complex the design is and how many pieces it takes to build it. A team logo is a handful of colors inside a circle, so it’s usually fairly simple. But a full nautical compass is dozens of custom shapes, including pavers manufactured to look like rope, so it’s much more complicated.

A sports inlay, a team logo for example, runs about $1,500. A full nautical compass runs $2,500. But when you compare that to the cost of a $15,000 patio, a fully custom inlay is a pretty small part of the cost of the job, and it gives you more perceived value for the whole space.

Sports teams and patriotic designs are what we mostly build out here. The catalog includes work like an eagle with an American flag behind it. This is a pro-military part of the country, with two large military installations plus National Guard and Coast Guard units, so a patriotic patio is something that people love here more than they would somewhere else.

An inlay is the pick when the rest of the field stays quiet, when the design means something to the people who will stand on it, and when the patio is large enough that the inlay sits in open space instead of crowding the border.

When a Simple Running Pattern Is Still the Right Call

Not every backyard should get one of these three types of custom patios, and we will tell you that when we first talk, not after you’ve paid us a deposit.

If the space is a small landing off the back door rather than a full patio, a three-size basketweave doesn’t have enough room and a checkerboard will just look like four squares. A clean field with all pavers the same size, laid tight with good cuts at the border, will look better than a bold pattern crammed into a space it wasn’t designed for.

If the middle of the patio is going to live under a table and an outdoor rug year round, it’s not worth spending money on a pattern you’re not ever going to see. Put that money into the material or into the size of the space instead.

And if the budget is tight, the pattern is the last place you should put money into. What goes in underneath the pavers is what decides whether the patio is still flat decades from now, and we won’t trade that longevity to buy a better looking surface. We build all jobs to last, so we don’t have to come back. A basic field on a base that was built right is much better than a showpiece pattern that will fail in three to five years.

An inlay is a personal touch on top of all that. If you wouldn’t choose an eagle or a team logo for yourself, but you just think it looks great in pictures, don’t do it. The ones that work are the ones that have personal meaning to the person who owns it.