Brick paver installation in Bethesda, Maryland.

01 / Local contextChoosing a brick paver contractor in Bethesda.

Brick paver installation in Bethesda is mostly a base-building job that happens to end in brick. The pavers are the part you see and the part every bidder shows you; the 10 inches of excavation, fabric, compacted stone and screeded sand underneath them is the part that decides whether the surface still looks like this in 2050. When homeowners call us to fix someone else’s three-year-old patio, the brick is almost always fine — the base was 3″ of loose gravel and there was no edge restraint.

What that means on the ground in our core service area:

• Bethesda (20814 / 20816 / 20817): the established blocks in Edgemoor, Battery Park and Glen Echo Heights are tight-access sites with mature trees. Brick paver work wins here because it goes in by hand — no ready-mix truck or pump line in a 10-foot side yard — and because a utility cut comes up and goes back down with the same brick.
• Chevy Chase & Somerset: colonial and Tudor frontages where a clay brick walkway in running bond is period-correct in a way stamped concrete never reads as. Frequently paired with brick stoops and mortar-set treads.
• Rockville & Potomac: larger fields — wrap-around patios, pool surrounds and circular drives — where a permeable brick paver build can pull square footage back out of a Montgomery County impervious-surface calculation.

We are a brick paver company, not a broker. Our own crews do the demo, the grading, the base, the laying and the jointing, which is why the brick paver construction detail below is a spec we can publish rather than a sales page. Insured, COI on request, 1-year workmanship warranty on every installation.

02 / Installation diagramBrick paver installation diagram — the full cross-section.

This is the paver installation diagram we build to on every job, drawn to the proportions of a pedestrian patio or walkway. A driveway is the same stack with a thicker paver and 8″ of base instead of 6″.

Brick paver cross-section · pedestrian spec

Swipe the diagram sideways to read the full cross-section.

03 / What goes underneathWhat do I put under brick pavers?

Four layers, and the order matters. This is the single most consequential question in outdoor brick paver installation, because every layer below the brick either spreads load or drains water — and a layer that does neither (topsoil, stone dust, mortar on dirt) is where failures start.

And what not to put under brick pavers:

• Stone dust or screenings as a bedding layer. It holds water, freezes, and heaves the field. It is also nearly impossible to screed to a consistent 1″. Concrete sand only.
• Plastic sheeting. It traps water directly under the pavers instead of letting it drain through the base. Geotextile separates; plastic dams.
• A thin 3–4″ base under a driveway. A patio base under vehicle load is how you get wheel-path ruts by year three.
• Mortar or concrete poured on soil. A rigid bed needs a rigid, properly based slab under it — see section 05.

04 / Ground prepHow to prepare the ground for brick pavers (and why you can’t lay them over dirt).

The honest answer to how to install pavers over dirt is: don’t. Brick set straight on soil has no load-spreading layer and no drainage path, so in Montgomery County clay it sinks in the traffic lanes inside one season, heaves at the first hard freeze, and seeds weeds through every joint. A garden path you expect to redo in three years is a different standard; a patio, walkway or driveway meant to last 30 years is the sequence below.

1. Lay out and set grades. Mark the field 6″ wider than the finished surface on every side, then shoot grades so the finished brick falls 2% — about 1/4″ per foot — away from the house, with no low spot that can pond.
2. Excavate to full depth. 9–10″ below finished grade for a walkway or patio, 12–13″ for a driveway. Everything organic comes out; topsoil left in place is a sponge that will settle.
3. Proof-roll and compact the subgrade. Run the plate compactor over the exposed clay and watch for areas that pump or stay spongy. Those get excavated and replaced with stone — a soft subgrade can never be corrected from above.
4. Roll out geotextile. Woven fabric over the whole subgrade with 12″ overlaps, carried up the sides of the excavation.
5. Build the base in lifts. CR-6 in 3–4″ lifts, each compacted in two directions before the next goes down — 6″ total for pedestrian surfaces, 8″ for vehicular. Hold the base to the same 2% plane as the finished surface, not level.
6. Screed 1″ of bedding sand. Screed rails set to grade, concrete sand pulled flat with a screed board, no footprints. Any variation here telegraphs straight through to the finished brick as waviness.
7. Lay, cut, restrain, lock. Pavers set off a stringline with 1/8″ joints, perimeter cut wet, edge restraint spiked at 10″ centers, polymeric sand swept in, field compacted over a rubber mat, joints misted to activate.

05 / Sand-set vs. mortar-setDo pavers need to be glued down? And how to lay brick pavers with mortar.

No — a brick paver field is not glued down. It is held by interlock: the pavers are confined by a spiked edge restraint and bound to each other by polymeric sand in the joints. That flexibility is the point. A sand-set surface can move a few millimeters with the frost and settle back; a glued one cannot, so it cracks. Adhesive belongs in exactly four places — the cap course of a wall, step treads and risers, pool coping, and the first course butting a mortar-set stoop.

Mortar-set brick is a different system, not a better one. It needs a rigid base: a reinforced concrete slab, properly based and sloped. Here is the honest comparison we walk Bethesda homeowners through:

How to lay brick pavers with mortar, in the order we do it on a stoop or an overlay: confirm the slab is sound and sloped (a cracked or heaving slab gets replaced, not covered); dry-lay the pattern to set your cuts and joint width; dampen the slab; trowel and notch a 1/2–1″ Type S mortar bed in a workable section; beat each brick to the line with a rubber mallet, keeping joints consistent at 3/8–1/2″; let it set, then fill the joints with mortar and tool them concave; sponge the haze off before it cures and keep it damp for 48–72 hours. Mortar-set brick in Maryland should be laid in the shoulder seasons — not in a July afternoon, and never with a hard freeze inside three days.

Related service

Concrete walkways & steps — Bethesda, Rockville & Potomac

The poured slab, footing and riser work underneath mortar-set brick treads and landings — and the comparison when a poured walk is the better answer.

06 / WalkwaysHow to lay pavers for a walkway.

A front walk is the most-judged 100 square feet on a house, and it is also the easiest brick paver installation to get wrong, because the layout decisions happen before anyone touches a brick.

• Width: 4 feet for a main front walk — two people abreast, and in proportion with the facade. 3 feet is the practical floor for a secondary or garden path; 5 feet reads generous on wider Bethesda and Potomac frontages.
• Border first, field second. Set a soldier-course border down both edges, then run the field pattern into it. All your cuts land against the border where they read as intentional, instead of against the lawn where they read as leftovers.
• Pattern: running bond is the period-correct read on a colonial frontage and the cheapest to lay. 45° herringbone costs more in cuts and waste but interlocks hardest — use it anywhere a vehicle might cross, including the apron where the walk meets the driveway.
• Curves: lay them off a fixed radius point and a string, not by eye. A brick walk with a wandering radius is visible from the street for the life of the house.
• Crown or cross-slope: 1/4″ per foot to one side, carried the whole run. Don’t pitch a walk toward the house to save a step at the stoop — re-grade the landing instead.
• Where the walk meets the stoop: finish the top course against a mortar-set brick landing, with the walk’s own base carried a full 6″ past the stoop so the two systems don’t settle differently.

07 / ApplicationsOutdoor brick paver installation across the property.

The same base-and-bedding spec scales to every outdoor surface we build in brick. What changes is base depth, paver thickness and edge detail:

Vehicular spec

Paver driveway service — Rockville, Potomac & Bethesda

The 8″-base, vehicular-paver build for drives and aprons: ICPI spec, Belgard / Techo-Bloc / Unilock lines, 2026 pricing and Montgomery County permits.

08 / CostHow much does it cost to have brick pavers installed?

In Bethesda and the surrounding Montgomery County market, installed brick pavers run $18 to $32 per square foot for walkways and patios, and $22 to $45 per square foot for driveways, which carry a thicker base and a thicker paver. Material is roughly a third of that; the base and the labor to build it are the rest. Line items below are the same ones that appear on a Kempf Mill proposal.

What that means for a real project in Bethesda: a 120 sq ft front walkway typically lands $3,000 — $4,500; a 300 sq ft brick paver patio $6,500 — $9,500; a 600 sq ft brick driveway $14,000 — $22,000. Tight side-yard access, a mortar-set stoop, or hauling spoil out by wheelbarrow in Edgemoor all push the per-foot number toward the top of the range — which is why we price off a site walk rather than a satellite image.

09 / PermitsWhat Montgomery County requires for brick paver work.

• Patios and walkways at grade generally need no building permit in unincorporated Bethesda, but sediment-control and impervious-surface limits still apply, and HOA or historic-district review may.
• Driveways and anything in the public right-of-way require a Montgomery County DPS driveway or right-of-way permit.
• Stormwater review where the added impervious area crosses county thresholds — a permeable brick paver build can keep you under it.
• Steps, walls over 4′ and structures attached to the house are permitted work; so are pool-area surfaces inside the barrier.
• City of Rockville issues its own right-of-way permits separately from county DPS.

We pull the permits we need and itemize the fees. Where we think a permeable build will pay for itself in stormwater credit, we’ll say so on the proposal.

Pairs with

Retaining & seat walls — Montgomery County clay

Most brick patios on a Bethesda slope need a wall to make the grade work. Geogrid, drainage and block systems engineered for local soils.

10 / FAQBrick paver installation questions we get in Bethesda.