How much does a concrete patio cost in Arlington, TX?

The $8 to $14 band is the whole job on a standard patio: layout, stripping topsoil, grading and compacting the subgrade, compacted base, forms, reinforcement, 4 inches of ready-mix concrete, the broom finish, control joints cut at the right spacing, and cleanup. It assumes the truck can get close enough to discharge and that the ground under the patio is sound once we open it up.

Where you land inside the band is mostly access and size. A back yard with a gate wide enough for a wheelbarrow run of thirty feet sits near the low end. A patio behind a fence line where every yard has to be wheeled around the house, or one that needs a pump, sits at the top — that is labor, and labor is most of the difference between the two ends of the band.

Two things that are not in the band and get priced as their own lines: tearing out an old slab at $2.50 to $4.50 per square foot, and a rebar grid at $0.60 to $1.10. On DFW clay we put steel in most patios and show it as a separate line so you can see what it costs. Read how the slab actually goes together on the concrete patios page.

A 12 by 16 patio is 192 square feet and about 2.6 cubic yards of concrete with waste. On the per-foot math that is roughly $1,536 to $2,688, which lands right on our job minimum, so the honest number is about $1,800 to $2,700. It is also a short load — most DFW plants add a small-batch fee under about 4 cubic yards.

A 16 by 20 patio is 320 square feet, about 4.3 yards, which clears the short-load line and fills part of one truck. Broom finish runs about $2,550 to $4,500. The same patio in exposed aggregate is about $3,500 to $5,750, and stamped is about $4,500 to $7,700. If an old slab has to come out first, add roughly $800 to $1,440 on that size.

A 20 by 20 patio is 400 square feet and about 5.4 yards: roughly $3,200 to $5,600 in broom finish. Notice what happens across those three sizes — the price per square foot improves as the pour gets bigger, because the fixed cost of showing up spreads further. If you have been thinking about a walkway or steps too, pouring them the same day is the cheapest they will ever be.

Broom finish is the baseline at $8 to $14 per square foot. The dragged texture grips when the slab is wet, hides minor surface variation, and needs no upkeep. For most back patios and pool decks it is the right answer, not the cheap answer.

Salt finish is $9 to $15 and gives a pitted texture. Smooth steel-trowel is $8.50 to $14.50 but gets slick wet, so we steer it to covered areas. Exposed aggregate is $11 to $18: the surface is washed back to the stone, it is tough, it hides dirt and it is barefoot-friendly once sealed. Integral color or acid stain runs $12 to $20.

Stamped is the top of the range at $14 to $24 per square foot, because pour day carries color hardener, release agent, the stamping itself and a seal coat — and it wants resealing every two to three years to hold its color. On a 320-square-foot patio that is roughly $1,950 to $3,200 more than broom. Whether that is worth it is a real question with a real answer: stamped versus broom finish lays the two side by side.

Two fixed costs drive it. The first is mobilization: the crew, the forms, the tools, the layout and the cleanup take about the same effort whether the pour is 200 square feet or 600, and that cost divides across fewer feet on a small job. The second is the concrete itself — most ready-mix plants in DFW charge a short-load fee under about 4 cubic yards, and a small patio is always a short load.

That is where the $1,800 job minimum comes from. It is not a markup on small customers; it is what it costs to put a crew and a truck on your street for a day. If your patio prices out under it, the fix is almost always to add the thing you were going to call about next: the walk to the side gate, the pad under the AC unit, the steps off the back door. One mobilization, one truck, three finished items.

The same logic runs the other way on a big patio. Past about 400 square feet the per-foot number settles toward the middle of the band, and the extra 100 square feet you were on the fence about costs less per foot than the first 100 did.

Run the free calculator first. Put in the length, width, thickness and finish, tick tear-out if there is an old slab, and it returns the installed price band, the cubic yards, the truck count, the joint spacing and the cure schedule. It is the same math this page uses, so there are no surprises between the two.

Then have us walk it. The calculator cannot see how the yard drains, whether the gate is wide enough for a wheelbarrow, how far the truck has to park from the forms, or what is under the old slab. Those are the things that move a number inside the band, and they are the reason a written estimate after a site visit is worth more than any figure on a screen.

While you are planning: a patio slab is 4 inches on a compacted base, pitched away from the house so water leaves, with joints every 8 to 10 feet. You can walk on it after about 24 hours, set furniture at about 3 days, and it reaches design strength at 28. If the patio is going under a cover or an outdoor kitchen, say so early — that changes the slab, not just the price. Costs for other pours are on the driveway cost and slab cost pages.