Walkways and stairsin Woburn, MA

How to lay out a front walk, which material suits your house, what keeps a walk flat, and what makes steps safe, even and long-lasting.

Laying out a front walkway

A front walk is the part of the yard everyone uses, every day, in every kind of weather. The questions that matter most are practical ones:

• Width. Wide enough for two people to walk side by side, or for one person with groceries and a stroller.
• Where it starts. Most visitors arrive from the driveway, not the street, so the walk should meet the driveway where people actually park and get out.
• Grade. A walk that climbs needs steps or a gentle ramp, not a steep run of pavers that turns into a slide in January.
• Water. The walk should shed rain to the lawn on both sides and never send it toward the house or the front steps.

Our posts on how to design a paver walkway and installing a paver walkway on level ground go into more detail.

Straight, curved or stepping stones

A straight walk suits a formal colonial and is the most direct way to the door. A curve softens the front of the house and leads the eye, but most pavers have to be cut along a curve, and the cut edge is where the quality of the work shows. A contrasting border course along each side, like the charcoal edge on the curved walkway we built in Reading, gives the curve a clean line. Stepping stones set in lawn or gravel work well for a side path or garden walk that isn't used every day. Our posts on curved paver walkways and stepping stone walkways show the options.

Walkway materials

For walks and steps, the paver our customers ask for most is Unilock Brussels Block, which has a tumbled, aged look. We also build walks in Belgard and other concrete pavers, in clay brick, for example in a herringbone pattern with a contrasting border, and in natural stone: bluestone, flagstone and granite. Brick and bluestone suit older homes; a modern paver suits a newer house or one with a gray and white palette. Matching the walk to the front steps and the driveway makes the whole front of the house read as one design. See more looks in our paver walkway ideas and brick walkway ideas.

What keeps a walkway flat

Walkways get shoveled, salted and walked on through every freeze and thaw, so they need the same kind of foundation as a patio, just in a long, narrow shape. The soft soil comes out, a compacted gravel base goes in, and the edges are held so the pavers can't drift into the lawn, which is where most old walks start to come apart. Each walk is pitched slightly to one side so water runs off it. Our winter care guide for pavers explains which de-icers to use on a paver or stone walk.

Building steps that are safe and last

The stairs or steps that lead to your front door get more abuse than any other part of the hardscape. Newly built brick or stone steps with flagstone or granite treads are about the most durable steps you can build, and they set the tone for the whole entry. A few things make the difference between steps that feel right and steps people trip on:

• Even risers. Every step the same height, every tread the same depth. One step that is a little taller than the rest is the one people catch a toe on.
• A solid base. Steps sit on their own compacted base, so they don't settle away from the house or from the walk below.
• A real landing. A landing at the door big enough to stand on while the storm door swings open.
• The code. Step heights, tread depths and landings are set by the building code, and our steps are built to it.

For treads we use granite, bluestone and flagstone; for risers, brick, wall block, stone and fieldstone veneer. The Stoneham steps further down this page have stacked-stone risers and granite treads over a paver landing.

Steps through a slope or a wall

When a walk climbs a sloped yard, steps can be set into the hill between low walls, or run up through a retaining wall to the level above. Granite steps are often the best way through a fieldstone wall, as on the North Reading pool area we built. Where a wall has to hold back the slope, it is built as a retaining wall. Our post on building a paver walkway on a slope covers paver steps in more detail.

Repair or rebuild your old steps?

If your brick or stone front steps are cracked, missing mortar or have a loose tread, they can often be repaired; that work is covered on our masonry services page. When steps are tipping, pulling away from the house or crumbling through, the problem is underneath them, and a rebuild on a new base is what fixes it. That is often the moment to widen the walk and the landing too. Our post on front step repair or rebuild helps you tell which you need.

What decides the price

A walkway price comes down to length and width, the material, how many cuts the layout needs (curves and borders add cutting), how much digging the site needs, and whether steps or a landing are part of the job. Steps add the most per foot, because every riser and tread is set by hand. Our article on what a stone walkway costs explains each factor. The visit and the estimate are free, and you get a price before any work starts.