How many bricks are in a square foot?

It depends on the brick size and joint. A standard modular brick with a 3/8 inch joint covers a face of about 32 square inches, giving roughly 6.86 bricks per square foot. Larger king or jumbo bricks need fewer per square foot.

Why does the mortar joint matter?

Each brick is laid with a mortar joint on its bottom and one end, so the effective coverage of a unit is its size plus the joint thickness in both directions. Ignoring the joint overestimates the brick count by several percent.

How much waste should I add?

Add 5 to 10 percent for cuts at openings and corners plus breakage in handling. Complex walls with many openings or returns lean toward 10 percent; long straight runs can use 5 percent.

How many bricks come on a pallet?

Modular bricks are commonly cubed about 500 per pallet, though this varies by manufacturer. CMU blocks usually palletize around 90 to 120 units. The tool uses an editable units-per-pallet figure so you can match your supplier.

Does this count both faces of a double-wythe wall?

No. The calculator counts a single wythe — one brick thickness. For a double-wythe wall, run the calculation twice or double the result, and remember to allow for the collar joint and any ties.

Brick & Block Count Calculator

Ordering the right number of bricks or blocks comes down to wall face area divided by the coverage of one unit — but that coverage has to include the mortar joint around each unit. This calculator does that for common US brick sizes and standard CMU blocks, then adds waste and rounds up to whole pallets.

How it works

Each unit covers its own face dimensions plus one mortar joint in each direction, because every course shares a bed joint and every unit shares a head joint:

effective unit width  = nominal length + joint
effective unit height = nominal height + joint
unit face area        = effective width × effective height  (square inches)
units per square foot = 144 / unit face area
bare count            = wall area (sq ft) × units per square foot
with waste            = bare count × (1 + waste% / 100)
pallets               = ceil(with waste / units per pallet)

The built-in unit sizes are face dimensions: modular brick 8 × 2.25 in, queen 8 × 2.75 in, king 9.625 × 2.75 in, jumbo 8 × 2.75 in (thicker bed), and CMU block 16 × 8 in.

Example and tips

A 20 ft by 8 ft wall is 160 square feet. With modular brick at a 3/8 inch joint that is about 6.86 bricks per square foot, or roughly 1,098 bricks bare — about 1,153 with 5 percent waste, just over two cubed pallets. CMU blocks at 16 × 8 in face cover about 1.125 blocks per square foot, so the same wall needs roughly 180 blocks. Always round pallets up; suppliers rarely break a cube.