How to measure a lawn's square footage

1. Walk it with a measuring wheel

The old way still works. Roll the wheel along each side of the lawn, break the yard into simple shapes, and add them up.

1. Sketch the yard and split the grass into rectangles, triangles and the odd circle.
2. Measure each shape. A rectangle is length times width. A triangle is half the base times the height. A round area is 3.14 times the radius times the radius.
3. Add up the grass, then subtract beds, patios and anything else you will not mow or treat.

Good for: an accurate number on a property you are already standing on, and the things a photo will not show you: locked gates, steep slopes, dog runs, a side yard only a push mower fits through.

The catch: it costs a drive and a walk before you have the job. Curved beds turn into a dozen small shapes, and it is easy to skip the back yard when nobody is home to open the gate.

2. Trace it on Google Earth or Google Maps

Free satellite imagery is enough to measure most yards from your desk.

• In Google Earth on the web, open the Measure tool, click around the edge of the lawn and connect back to your first point. Google Earth then shows the area of the shape you closed.
• In Google Maps on a computer, right-click a corner, choose Measure distance and click along an edge to get its length. Measure the length and width of each section and multiply.

Good for: a free number without the drive, when you only have a few quotes to work up.

The catch: it gets slow when requests pile up, because every section and every bed is its own shape to draw and add or take away. Tree canopy and shadows hide the real edge, the photo can be older than the last landscaping job, and on an unfenced property line it is easy to trace a strip of the neighbor's grass.

3. Look up the lot size from the county or Zillow

Every property has a lot size in the county assessor's records, and listing sites like Zillow show it too. It is instant and free.

The catch: it measures the lot, not the lawn. The house, garage, driveway, patio, beds and gravel are all inside that number, and on a suburban lot the grass can easily be less than half of it. The lot line can also leave out grass you do mow, like the strip between the sidewalk and the curb. Use the lot size as a ceiling and a sanity check, not as the number you price from. Lot size vs lawn size walks through an example.

4. Use a satellite measuring tool

Satellite measuring tools do the tracing for you. You type the address, the tool finds the property on overhead imagery, outlines the turf and reports the square footage.

With Clarity Measure a run takes about a minute. The result shows the lawn outlined on the imagery, the areas it left out (the house, paving and beds) and the total, and you can measure the front, the back or both. You can also add driveways, sidewalks and parking lots or patios to the same search, which helps if you quote snow removal too. Other tools in this group include Deep Lawn, Aspire's PropertyIntel (which replaced Go iLawn) and SiteRecon. Our Go iLawn alternatives guide compares what they cost, and lawn measurement software, explained walks through how they work.

Where satellite measuring struggles

• Heavy tree cover. From above, a big maple hides the grass under it. The tool has to judge where the lawn edge runs beneath the canopy, and that judgment can be off.
• Corner lots. Two street sides mean more lawn facing the street and often two curb strips, and it is less obvious which side is the front.
• Shared driveways and open property lines. Where two yards run together with no fence, bed or walk between them, nothing in the picture says where one yard ends and the next begins.
• Old imagery. A new patio, a new build or a yard just converted to rock may not be in the photo yet.

When an outline is off, fix it instead of starting over. In Clarity Measure you open the measurement and drag the outline to where the edge really is, and the total updates as you go. Treat any satellite number as a first pass to check before you quote. It is not a survey.

Which way to use