Exposed Aggregate Cost in Perth: Real Prices Per Square Metre

Exposed aggregate is the most popular driveway upgrade in WA, and it's also the finish people find hardest to get a straight price on. So here's the number first.

Exposed aggregate costs $115 to $155 per square metre, installed, GST included. That's the published Flow Form rate across metro Perth. Where a job lands inside that band comes down to three things: how big it is, what stone goes in it, and what has to happen before anyone can pour.

Everything below shows the working. If you'd rather just have a number for your own driveway, the instant estimator gives you one in about 30 seconds and doesn't ask for your email.

What the rate covers, and what it doesn't

The rate is for a finished slab. It covers minor site prep on a typical Perth sand pad, SL72 steel mesh on chairs through the slab, 100mm of concrete, the pour, the finish and the wash back that reveals the stone, control joints cut within a day or two, sealing and cleanup.

Priced separately, because these swing too far between jobs to bundle in:

• Demolition and bulk earthworks, if an old driveway or paving has to come out
• Thickening to 125mm where cars drive, at $10 to $25 per m2
• Excavation surprises like rock or deep fill, and engineering reports
• Council crossover permits and drainage runs

All of it gets flagged at the site visit, before it lands on a quote.

Size changes the rate more than people expect

A 12 m2 path and a 160 m2 driveway don't cost the same per metre, because a big chunk of any pour is fixed: crew, truck, formwork, setup. Spread across 12 square metres that hurts. Spread across 160, it barely registers.

Area	Size factor	Effective rate per m2
Under 20 m2	x1.25	$143.75 to $193.75, with a $2,500 minimum
20 to 29 m2	x1.15	$132.25 to $178.25
30 to 79 m2	x1.00	$115 to $155
80 to 149 m2	x0.95	$109.25 to $147.25
150 m2 and up	x0.90	$103.50 to $139.50

So a 15 m2 front entry prices at $2,500 to $2,950: the small works rate lifts the metre rate, and the minimum catches the bottom. The flip side is that adding the side path while the crew and the truck are already there is the cheapest concrete you'll ever buy.

A worked example: a 66 m2 double driveway

Most double driveways in Perth land between 60 and 80 square metres. Take 66, a 6 metre by 11 metre run from the garage to the kerb. That sits in the standard tier, so the factor is 1.00:

• 66 x $115 = $7,590
• 66 x $155 = $10,230

Rounded the way the estimator rounds, low down and high up to the nearest $50, that's $7,550 to $10,250 on a clean sand pad.

Now the realistic version. Cars park on it, so it wants the thickening, and a cracked slab has to come out first. Each row adds to the one above.

What you're pouring	Estimate, GST included
66 m2 exposed aggregate, clean pad	$7,550 to $10,250
Plus thickening to 125mm for vehicles	$8,250 to $11,900
Plus demolishing the old driveway	$10,550 to $15,850
Plus a pump for tight rear access	$11,750 to $17,450

The per-square-metre extras don't get the size discount. Carting away 66 m2 of old concrete isn't cheaper per metre than carting away 30 m2, so discounting it would be dishonest.

What pushes a job to the top of the band

Premium seeded stone. Standard blends sit inside the published band. Premium and custom seeded stone adds $20 to $40 per m2, so on that 66 m2 driveway it's another $1,320 to $2,640, taking it to roughly $8,900 to $12,900. The blends are on the exposed aggregate page, and it's worth seeing samples in daylight.

Tight access. If a truck can't get a chute to the pour, the concrete goes in by pump, at $1,200 to $1,600 flat. That's most rear courtyards, most side-of-house runs past a meter box, and anything through a gate, and it's a big enough line to be worth checking access before you compare quotes.

Demolition. $35 to $60 per m2. Old crossovers, thick unreinforced slabs and paving over a compacted rubble base sit at the top of that.

Past the priced extras, what adds labour is shape and detail: small panels, feature bands, steps, curves, steep falls. None of that has a tidy per-metre number, which is why the fixed quote comes after someone stands on your block.

Why the cheapest quote is often the one that skips something

There are two easy ways to take real money out of a quote, and both are invisible on handover day.

Thin the slab. Dropping from 100mm to 75mm removes a quarter of the concrete. On a 66 m2 driveway that's 6.6 cubic metres down to about 5. Smaller order, identical-looking driveway, right up until a loaded ute parks on it.

Skip the mesh, or lay it wrong. SL72 mesh held on chairs in the body of the slab is what keeps a shrinkage crack hairline instead of open. Mesh dropped on the sand and poured over does almost nothing, because it ends up under the slab where it can't work. You can't see that from the top. You can see it in year three.

Ask every quote three questions: how thick, what mesh, and where does the mesh sit. A $2,000 gap usually explains itself.

Perth conditions that move the price

Sand pads. Most of the coastal plain is sand, which compacts well and drains, and that's exactly why minor site prep sits inside the rate here. Limestone rubble fill, clay through the hills, or deep fill where a pool used to be is a different conversation, which is what the site visit is for.

The crossover. The section over the verge between your boundary and the road belongs to the council. Permits and council specification sit outside our price, so start that paperwork early. Approval takes longer than the pour.

Summer pour timing. A hot easterly pulls water out of a slab fast, and exposed aggregate has a narrow window between too green to wash back and too hard to reveal. We call the pour on the forecast 48 hours ahead. We don't pour in the rain. A date that moves two days beats a finish that never comes right. The full sequence is on the process page.

From estimate to fixed number

Run your own figures through the estimator: pick exposed aggregate, enter your area, tick demolition or a pump, and you have a range in half a minute with no email gate. A free site visit then gets it measured properly and turns that into a written fixed quote, which is the number that counts. Get in touch to book one.

If exposed lands higher than you want, plain and coloured runs $75 to $110 per m2 and liquid limestone runs $85 to $115. Same prep, same mesh, different surface. Honed concrete goes the other way, at $160 to $210.