You can download this Buyers Guide For Paving Circles as a free PDF which you can give away to friends, family, or anyone else. The PDF is handy for printing out and reading offline!

So you’d like to add a cool paving circle or pattern to your garden? Great idea! The circles, stars, suns and octagons add a very special “wow” factor to a garden, for both you and your friends to admire…

Patio Paving Circle

Wait!

Before you jump in at the deep end, there are several questions you need to consider before buying your new garden feature. In this guide, we’ll tackle those questions. Hopefully, by the time you’ve finished, you’ll know exactly which design is best for you!

Consider Your Budget

Obviously, cost is a major concern when doing a new landscaping project. Thankfully, paving is one of the cheapest ways to make a big, positive change to your garden. As it’s also very low maintenance, you won’t be spending more money over time to keep it looking good… unlike a lawn, which can be an expensive headache when you consider the tools, chemicals and time it takes to maintain.

However, despite paving being great value for money, cost may still be a consideration. If so, you’ll want to think about man-made paving slabs as opposed to natural stone. Obviously, man-made concrete slabs can be created in bulk in a factory, so you save a lot of money compared to the sourcing and shipping of natural stone. However, with recent advances in the ability to replicate the patterns of natural stone, it’s often difficult to tell the concrete imitation from the real thing!

Natural Sandstone 2-ring

Yorkvale 2-ring

The cost savings of using man-made slabs can be significant. A 2-ring “Natural Sandstone” circle paving pack can be 25% more expensive, compared to man-made stone (Bradstone Yorkvale) despite having the same number of slabs.

Of course, some people prefer the natural stone, with it’s inherent variability and are willing to pay more for the aesthetic appeal. Ultimately, the decision is yours, based on your personal preferences.

What Sized Area Are You Working With?

It’s obviously no use buying a huge 3-ring circle if you have a small backgarden. It may not fit, and, even if it did, it would probably overpower the rest of the garden. As a rough rule of thumb, the smallest 1-ring paving circle is about 6-feet (1.8 metres) in diameter, a 2-ring paving circle will be about 9 feet (2.8 metres) in diameter and a 3-ring circle will be about 13 feet (4 metres) in diameter.

One-ring (1.8 metre)

Two-ring (2.8 metre)

Three-ring (4 metre)

 (Measurements are approximate and should be used as guidelines. Please check the exact measurements of any circle paving pack before purchase)

 Note, if you use a “squaring off kit” to turn the circle into a square, the length and width of the square will be roughly the same as the diameter of the circle because all the “squaring off kit” does is fill in the corners.

To quickly look at more unusual shapes…

 This Octagon is just over 8 feet (2.5 metres) in diameter…

Octagon

 This Sun Circle pattern is 9 feet (2.8 metres) in diameter…

Sun Circle

 This beautiful Bamburgh Star is just over 7 feet (2.2 metres) in diameter…

Bamburgh Star

Finally, this Spinning Circle is 8 feet (2.5 metres) in diameter….

Spinning Circle

If you want a small, square, patio area, a good choice is to buy a paving circle kit of the right size along with a squaring off kit which gives a square-shaped patio.

 If you want a more rectangular shaped patio, or perhaps a larger square with a paving circle in the middle, it’s usually possible to buy “patio packs” of the same paving stones as the circle, star or octagon is made of, so that the whole patio area blends into one seamless design feature.

 It’s even possible to cut paving stones to specific shapes if you are confident enough, using a cutting disk, to make the paving stones fit your specific patio design.

 There’s an excellent calculator which works in both metric and imperial here…

http://www.online-calculators.co.uk/diy/tiling-paving.php

 If you tell the calculator the area to be paved, and the slab dimensions, it will tell you the number of slabs you need.

Bear in mind, it’s often a good idea to buy a patio pack rather than individual paving slabs as the cost will be cheaper and a patio pack will often give you a variety of differently sized stones to create a more interesting visual effect than a repeating layout of identical slabs. Finally, slabs in a patio pack will most likely have been taken from the same quarry at the same time, which will minimise variability when buying natural stone.

My suggestion would be to pick the size of circle, octagon or star you want, then decide if you want to incorporate it into a patio. If you do, buy the squaring off kit and, if you’re going for a large patio, either buy additional slabs to place around the design feature, or an extra patio kit.

How To Get The Best Deal

In business, nothing ever stays the same for long. The best deal will vary as special offers are introduced and other deals expire. I’ve always suggested that people consider several factors when deciding what constitutes the “best deal” for them.

Firstly, paving is such a heavy object that almost all shops, either online of offline, will have to arrange for delivery. That being the case, it makes sense to buy from an online retailer who doesn’t have the overheads of an offline business and will usually be cheaper. On the other hand, you want to use a trusted online retailer who not only offers a great price, but will also deliver the product, offer a no-question return policy and have knowledgeable and helpful customer support. For our recommendations, take a look around the website.

How To Lay A Paving Circle

As this is a “buyers guide”, we’re not tackling how to lay paving in this guide. Check out our other free guides for how to lay paving and more.

Which Type Of Finish To Go For?

I’ve left this question until last because it’s really a personal preference. Depending on which design you select, circle, octagon or star, and whether or not you decide to go for man-made paving or natural, you’ll have a different range of finishes to choose from.

For example, the Octagon design is only available as beautiful Natural Sandstone in the Fossil Buff finish. Also, the spectacular Star (“Sun Circle”) motif is only available as Old Town paving in a Grey-Green with Mellow Costwold mix of slabs.

However, if you’re considering paving circles of either one, two or three rings, you’ll have more choice, from natural slabs such as sandstone or slate, to man-made slabs in as many as four different finishes.  

Conclusion

We hope you’ve enjoyed this Buyer’s Guide for paving circles. We’ve looked at different types of circles and patterns, types of stone, size considerations and more.  

We wish you good luck in your search for the perfect paving circle for your garden and hope it brings you pleasure for many years to come.

Price Match

Wouldn’t it be great to find a trusted online retailer with great customer support who also offered a “price match guarantee” so that you’d know you were getting the best deal? Well, if you’re shopping for paving, you’ll be delighted to learn that Simply Paving, our retail partner and the UK’s largest online retailer for paving products, now has a price match guarantee. They say, “if you find any of our listed paving cheaper elsewhere online, we’ll refund the difference”. Naturally, terms and conditions apply, but this does illustrate how Simply Paving are a top-notch retailer focused on looking after their customers.

Bradstone Ashbourne Circle

The smallest paving circle pack you can buy is the one-ring circle, which consists of a central circle and one outer ring.

A good example is the Bradstone Ashbourne range of 1-ring paving circles, pictured left, which measure approximately 1.8 metres (6 feet) in diameter. As you can see, the inner circle is made up of four quarter slabs whereas the outer circle has eight identical pieces, giving a total of just 12 paving slabs to lay in order to create the full paving circle.

1-ring-circle

This one-ring circle is also the cheapest option at roughly a hundred pounds including free delivery. The Bradstone Ashbourne range of 1-ring circles comes in four finishes, Antique Cotswold, Cotswold, York Brown and York Gold, all at the same price.

Bradstone Ashbourne Range

There are also patio paving packs available in the same finishes, if you wish to create a patio with the same stone effect. However, please note that there doesn’t appear to be a “squaring off kit” available for these products, which means that you couldn’t incorporate the circle into a patio unless you were to cut some of the slabs yourself with a cutting disk.

If you are interested in creating a small patio area containing a one-ring circular feature, you may want to consider the Bradstone Yorkvale paving which comes complete with a squaring off kit so you don’t have to worry about cutting paving slabs. The actual size of the patio created is 1.7 metres by 1.7 metres. Of course, if you wanted a larger patio area, you could buy an additional paving pack and extend the squared-off circle area to whatever size patio you wish to create.

Bradstone Yorkvale Circle

The Bradstone Yorkvale 1-ring circle with squaring off kit comes in Antique Gold or Autumn Brown. As you can see from the diagram, right, there are an extra 12 paving slabs for the squaring off kit, three for each corner, so that you end up with a square design.

If you’re interested in placing your circle within a new or existing patio, bear in mind that you’ll want to buy a “squaring off kit” at the same time as the circle kit. I would strongly suggest making the purchase of the squaring off kit from the same vendor in the same transaction to minimise any potential problems that can arise from buying them separately. Also, ensure the area of the squared off circle kit matches the area where you intend to place it in your patio.

Check out more questions and answers in our FAQ, or look for specific circle designs using our search function, category pages and tags.

So what do you type into Google?

Are you going to type, “Circle Paving”, “Paving Circle”, “Circular Paving”, or what?

Here’s a tip… the more specific you can be about what you’re looking for, the better. If you KNOW you’re looking for “Bradstone, 3-Ring Weathered Cotswold Circle Kit”, then type that in. Hopefully, you’ll visit this page and see the exact product you want to buy.

But what if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for? Well, you should still aim to be as precise as possible in your description, then browse around the pages which turn up in the search results. In the above example, you may type in “Bradstone Circle Kit”, and you may land on our Bradstone category page, which is fine because there you’ll be able to browse all the Circle Kits that Bradstone offers.

You can also think about how to narrow your searches in other ways. For example, if you’re in the UK and want to exclude any USA-based websites, you can either include “UK” in the search you do, or click the Google button which says, “only show results from the UK”. Also, if you’d really like free delivery or next day delivery, include those words in your search phrase.

So when you’re looking to buy online, remember to be as precise as possible in your searches. It’ll save you a lot of time and effort. Oh, and when you find a site you like, don’t forget to share it with your friends and bookmark it. (yes, that was a subtle hint!)

Apparently, in this area of India, 250Km from Jaipur, “an area covering approximately 40 square kilometres [is] home to 1,000 sandstone quarries!”

I was amazed to compile this list…

sunflower
butterfly
dragonfly
nautical star (compass points)
celtic knot
sunflare
astral
petal
abbey
rose

These designs are usually available within a circle motif, which can be included in a larger patio paving area by using a squaring-off kit. Sometimes the squaring-off stones come as part of the overall pack, but usually not because if they’re included, people who only want the circle would waste money buying stones they don’t need and won’t use.

The purpose of dry-laying is to work out how to position the paving stones in the correct arrangement which is especially important in a tricky job like this. It’s much easier to re-lay the paving stones if they haven’t been fixed. Also, with natural stone, there’s significant variation in the colour of the individual stones which makes it a good idea to dry-lay them so that you can align any specific stones based on their slightly different colour hues.

Well, it seems that the venerable Wetherdale range was supplanted by the shiny new Milldale range. If you’d like to check out the Milldale range of circles, just click on it in the tag-cloud to the bottom right of this page. –>

Wetherdale seems to have been phased out in 2007, so be careful if you find a stockist online because presumably they will be using up old stock. Make sure they have it available are are not just advertising it for sale when they’ve run out!

At Circle Paving, we offer a wide range of Bradstone (and Stoneflair) circle, octagon and other shape kits for you to easily create a feature from paving stones either as a standalone design, or as part of a patio paving area. We work in partnership with Simply Paving, who process the order and deliver the product to you, the end customer. Simply Paving also supply regular Bradstone paving slabs in a variety of finishes for if you just want plain slabs instead of a paving design, as well as stones for driveways, walling and building materials.

Since their launch in 2005, Simply Paving have supplied paving products to over 30,000 customers in the UK to become the leading online UK paving supplier. They offer great customer service, competitive prices and fast, free delivery.