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Five Things to Check Before You Choose a Patio Surface

Concrete, pavers or timber is usually settled by the garden rather than by the brochure. Five checks you can do yourself this weekend, and what each result points at. From a crew that lays one of the three and will happily send you to the others.

Updated September 2026 · Antioch Concrete

Our trade is poured concrete, and only that. Neither paving nor carpentry is something we offer, which is worth knowing before you read a comparison written by us, and which is also why three of the checks below point somewhere other than at our own work.

Nearly every article on this subject compares specifications. Specifications are the least useful input, because two identical patios in two different gardens will not behave the same way. Go outside instead. Five checks, an afternoon, and the answer will mostly have made itself.

Check one: the fall from your back door

How. Take a long straight board out to where the seating will go. Rest one end at threshold height, level it, and measure the drop to the ground at the far end.

What it tells you. This one check overrules the other four. Level ground keeps all three materials genuinely available. A significant drop means holding a solid surface at door height needs a lot of imported and consolidated fill, or steps and the acceptance that the seating is below the kitchen. Past a certain point, a raised timber structure is not a preference, it is simply the correct way to build on that ground.

Points at. Level, anything. Falling away, timber gains, hard.

Check two: how material gets into the garden

How. Walk the route a delivery would take. Note gate widths, side returns, fence lines, changes of level, and whether a truck could get anywhere near the work.

What it tells you. Concrete comes in bulk and does not like a long journey. A mixer that can discharge close to the forms makes a quick, controlled pour. A back garden reachable only through a narrow gate means every yard is barrowed or pumped, which changes the labour on the job. Pavers and boards arrive stacked and can be carried in over an afternoon without the same time pressure.

Points at. Good access, concrete stays cheapest. Genuinely awkward access narrows the gap and sometimes closes it.

Check three: where the water goes

How. Go out in heavy rain, or first thing the morning after. Watch where water runs, find where it stands, and see where your downspouts actually discharge.

What it tells you. Every surface has to move water away from the house. A poured slab does that by being laid to a fall, which is decided before placing and is awkward to change afterwards. Pavers can be lifted and adjusted. A deck largely sidesteps the question by letting water through.

The more important finding is a spot that already ponds. That is a ground problem, and it stays a ground problem under every material. Fix it first or you will be paying to bury it.

Points at. Nothing on its own, but it changes what has to happen underneath whichever you pick.

Check four: your neighbours' gardens

How. Walk the street. Look at surfaces that have been down a few years on the same soil, in the same winters, with the same drainage. Ask an owner what they would do again.

What it tells you. This is the closest thing to a controlled experiment you will ever get, and it costs a conversation. You will see which paver fields have gone uneven, which slabs have scaled at the edges where salt gets tracked, which decks have been refinished and which have not.

Points at. Whatever the ground around here has already been kind to.

Check five: what is actually going to sit on it

How. List it honestly. A table and chairs, or a grill, or a fire pit, or a hot tub, or small children barefoot for three months a year.

What it tells you. Weight and heat both narrow the field. A poured slab does not char and does not shift under a concentrated load. A hot tub is close to deciding the question by itself and has to be planned for before anything is built, not announced afterwards. Bare feet, on the other hand, are the strongest argument for timber, which stays kinder underfoot at both ends of the season.

Points at. Heavy or hot, concrete. Barefoot and level ground, timber has a real case.

Reading the five together

They rarely all agree, and they are not equally weighted. Check one can end the discussion on its own. Checks two and three change what the work costs and what has to happen below ground. Checks four and five are the ones that stop people choosing something they will regret.

If they come out mixed, that is not a failure of the method. It is often the garden telling you to use more than one material: a slab where the ground carries it, steps, and a raised structure over the part that falls away. Some of the better gardens around the lakes here are exactly that.

What each one asks of you afterwards

• Concrete. Nothing annual. Keep deicing chemicals off it, especially the first winter, and revisit a sealer occasionally. Why the first winter matters, and why the products sold as the mild option are the wrong ones, is set out in our patio pricing guide.
• Pavers. Joints need topping up and units need bedding back down, on a timetable the winters set. The compensation is that any square foot of it can be taken up and put back, forever.
• Timber. A predictable refinishing cycle, and boards in the end. Predictability has value.