Brick Calculator: How Many Bricks Do I Need

About 6.86 modular bricks per square foot of wall with a 3/8 inch mortar joint, since each brick plus its joint covers roughly 21 square inches, or 0.14583 square feet. The tool reports that per-brick coverage so you can check the figure against your own layout.

Mortar joints take up wall space, so each brick effectively covers its own face plus one joint on the length and one on the height. Adding the joint to both dimensions before dividing gives a realistic count instead of overestimating with bare brick faces.

A modular brick has a face of about 7.625 by 2.25 inches. With a 3/8 inch joint it lays out on a clean 8 by 2.625 inch module, which is the default here. Queen, utility and king sizes are common too, so type your actual brick face if it differs.

Around 10 percent covers breakage, cuts and culls for a plain rectangular wall. Bump it to 15 or 20 percent for herringbone or basket patterns, many corners, or lots of openings that force half and quarter cuts. The example with utility brick uses 15 percent to show the effect.

It counts a single wythe, one brick thick, as the note under the results states. For a double-wythe wall, run the numbers once and multiply the brick count by two, then add extra for header courses and wall ties.

No. It uses the gross rectangle of length times height. For a large opening, subtract its area by reducing the height or length you enter, or leave it in as extra contingency since cut bricks around openings often become waste anyway.

You cannot buy part of a brick, so the raw wall coverage is rounded up to a whole brick first, giving the count before waste. The waste percent is then applied to that whole number and rounded up again, which is why bricks to buy is always the larger figure.

The wall length and height are in feet and the brick and joint are in inches, so it is imperial. To use metric brick data, convert your brick face and joint to inches first, for example a 215 by 65 mm brick is about 8.465 by 2.559 inches.

Yes. The calculation runs entirely in your browser and nothing is uploaded, so your project dimensions never leave your device. The Copy estimate button just puts the summary on your clipboard.