Custom Designed Patio vs. Cookie-Cutter Patio: What 'Art Value' Buys You

You have two proposals in front of you and both of them talk about paver patios, but one costs a few thousand dollars more and mentions the word ‘custom’ three times. Nothing in either proposal actually tells you what the extra money is for, and nobody wants to pay more money for a word.

My name is Randy Thompson and I founded All-Out Hardscapes LLC. We build patios, walkways, and outdoor living spaces across Savannah and the Coastal Lowcountry, and we’ve installed more than 150 projects over 10 years, including work on Wilmington Island and in Savannah Quarters. Our motto is “it’s not hardscape, it’s artscape,” so you already know what side I’m on.

I’ll still be the first one to tell you that, in my opinion, most of what’s sold as custom around here is just a plain rectangle with a curve cut into one corner. Anybody can take a saw out there and cut a curve in anything. That’s just a shape and not a design. The real difference in those two proposals is whether the layout got drawn for your property or pulled off a shelf, and that difference will show up in places a photo won’t show.

What Does ‘Art Value’ Actually Buy You?

Art value buys two things, and only one of them you can see from your kitchen window.

The half you can see is artwork built into the surface. That means inlaying different colors instead of just putting in a flat field of gray, basketweave patterns, which are a woven look built from three different paver sizes instead of one repeating block, or a checkerboard where two colors alternate, and inlays, which are sections where different pavers get set into the field to make a certain shape or a logo. We built a checkerboard section that turns a backyard into Victory Lane for a NASCAR fan. That kind of work shows up in our recent projects.

The invisible half deals with the decisions that were made before a paver even came off the pallet. First there is pitch, which is the slope built into the surface so water runs off it instead of sitting on it. Another thing that matters is where the drain outlets are and where that water goes once it leaves. It’s important to decide where each edge lands in relation to your door, your gate, your driveway, and your grass. None of those things show up in photographs. But all of it will determine whether you still like the patio in 5 years.

What Does a Cookie-Cutter Patio Give You?

Based on the yards we’ve walked across the Lowcountry, most patio work that gets sold is cookie-cutter and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a real product with a real buyer, and for a simple yard it’s the right choice.

What makes it cookie-cutter isn’t the quality of the pavers. It’s because the decision about design was made before anybody looked at your yard.

The Design Process

Someone will measure your yard with a tape measure and decide on a rectangle or a simple L shape. Then it will be sized to the square footage that works with your budget. Then you’ll choose a paver from a display board and pick a certain pattern, either a running bond (rows offset like brickwork) or a herringbone (pavers set at an angle in an interlocking zigzag).

The proposal will come back as a paragraph with a square footage number. You are only approving a size and color, rather than approving a layout because there isn’t one to approve.

The Finished Product in Your Backyard

When it’s finished your patio will be 6 x 9 pavers with one pattern, 10 feet from the back of your porch, and it will be framed with a single row of pavers set on edge that goes around the patio called a soldier course. There is one color, one texture and one edge treatment.

You can take in the whole patio with one glance from the back door. And that’s fine when the yard is simple and the patio is only doing one job: holding a table and a grill up off the grass.

The Tradeoff You Accept

You’re trading choices for cheaper cost. The edges will be where the tape measure puts them, not where your gate opens or where the downspout dumps, and not where your dog already wore a path through the grass. When nothing in your yard affects the design, then it won’t cost you anything. But when the yard is tight, sloped, gated, or shared with a pool, it costs you every day you walk out there.

You also trade the focal point because with just one pattern and one color there’s nothing for the eye to land on, so the patio looks like a slab added onto the house instead of a room that belongs to it.

What Does a Custom-Designed Patio Give You?

The order of operations is totally different with a custom design. The drawing comes first and the way the patio is built follows the drawing, instead of the drawing being a sales tool that is not used once the installation begins.

That changes what you’re actually buying because now you’re buying a set of decisions, and the pattern on top is the least important decision of all of them.

The Design Process

We start with a rendering, which is a scaled color drawing of the completed patio, and we build it like the drawing by using your building documents and property survey from the county and laying your actual house out on the page. That rendering will then become a job blueprint, meaning it’s the working plan the crew builds from with dimensions, patterns, and drainage marked on it. We’ve been doing this at no charge on 95 percent of our jobs, including small walkways, because it’s important that you see a picture of your own yard on a grass background before anybody starts digging.

The standard we have for ourselves is that the finished job matches the rendering almost exactly. If what you approved on the screen isn’t what you see when the patio is finished, then the drawing was just decoration.

The Finished Product in Your Backyard

On one patio we built, the walkway runs slightly offset to the right. On paper it looks wrong, because it meets one post but not the other one. However, the gate hinges are on that side so when you swing that gate open, you won’t be stepping off into wet grass to walk around the gate. You’re on a hard surface the whole way. On that same job the homeowner has a small dog, so we ordered custom drain grates with narrower openings so the dog’s feet won’t drop through and get stuck.

Neither of those decisions makes the materials cost more and you can’t see either one in a picture. That’s the whole standard: every part of the job has a purpose. The art then goes on top of a plan that already works. That could be certain colors, a basketweave field, a checkerboard, or an inlay theme dealing with a team, branch of service or the water.

The Tradeoff You Accept

You trade time because the design and survey work come first before the actual building gets scheduled. The building part takes longer because cuts get made one at a time and patterns are set off a center line instead of the closest wall.

You trade flexibility also, because after a plan is drawn to fit the survey, moving the patio three feet in the wrong direction moves the drainage, the edges, and the pattern along with it. Decisions get made sooner than they do on a template job.

How Do I Tell Which One I’m Being Quoted?

You don’t have to know anything about construction to figure this out. Just ask four questions and listen for whether the answers are about your specific yard or about patios in general.

• Ask to see a drawing of your property, not a photo gallery, before you sign anything.
• Ask what happens at every edge, meaning where the patio meets the house, the gate, the driveway, and the grass.
• Ask why that pattern was picked for your patio instead of another one.
• Ask where the water will go after it runs off the top, and where it ends up after that.

Art value on top of a bad foundation is wasted money. A checkerboard patio that’s on top of sand will still sink, and a compass inlay in your patio that holds water is just an expensive puddle. We always build on an open-graded base, which is clean angular stone with no sand in it. That way, the water drains straight through instead of getting trapped below. Get a straight answer on the foundation before you start picking colors.

The Cost of Adding Art Value to Your Patio

What determines the cost is how the artwork gets made and how much layout labor it takes to do it correctly. The detailed inlays don’t get made out of standard pavers on site. A specialty manufacturer makes the artwork beforehand. The color-matched blocks come ready to set, and everything around them is Techo-Bloc. You’re paying for that manufactured art plus the labor to put it in the space it was designed for.

With our patios a sports inlay, meaning your team’s logo put into the concrete, costs $1,500. A full nautical compass with pavers cut to look like rope costs $2,500. Compare that to a $15,000 patio and a fully custom inlay is just a small part of the job and is the one thing every guest notices first.

There is a big demand for patriotic themed patios because this area carries two large military installations plus National Guard and Coast Guard as well. So an eagle with a flag behind it isn’t unusual in a backyard in Savannah because it’s part of people’s actual life.

When Is a Cookie-Cutter Patio the Right Call for Your Yard?

If you’re wanting a small pad off the back door for a grill and a table, the yard drains fine on its own, and there aren’t any gates or grade changes to worry about, then buy the straightforward patio with one simple pattern. You’d be paying for an inlay that a table covers up, and that’s not a good trade.

If your budget is tight, spend it on what’s underneath. Every dollar should go under the pavers before a dollar goes into the pattern on top. A plain patio that is built correctly will outlast a beautiful one that’s built cheap, and we would rather you own the first one.

We hold ourselves to that same standard. When we look back at jobs we once thought were custom, a lot of them now look like cookie-cutter to us. Pool jobs that we thought we were doing custom work on weren’t. By our own current standard we have two jobs we would put in the genuinely custom column, and raising that standard for ourselves is the only reason our drawings look the way they do today.