Paver Quality Guide: Good, Better, Best

Why Paver Quality Actually Matters

In a typical hardscape project, the pavers and wall units themselves are only about 20% of the total cost — the rest is labor, base material, and site work. That makes the paver choice the wrong place to cut corners: a cheaper product doesn’t meaningfully lower your project cost, but it does show up in how the surface looks five and ten years down the road. Many pavers look nearly identical on installation day. The difference shows up later.

Good: Standard Pavers

Budget-friendly, traditional pavers manufactured to meet ASTM standards for quality and strength are a legitimate option for lower-traffic areas or tighter budgets. They’re durable, but they don’t carry the fade-resistant color technology or surface treatments of higher tiers.

Better: Enhanced-Color Pavers (EnduraColor)

Products using a two-layer manufacturing process — concentrated color plus wear-resistant finer aggregates on the surface — resist the chalky fading that standard pavers develop over years of UV exposure. This is the tier we recommend for most driveways and high-visibility patios, where you want the color you picked on day one to still be the color you have in year ten.

Best: Elegance Collection

Textured, natural-stone-look pavers — the kind that replicate riven flagstone or tumbled European cobblestone — fall in this tier. Richcliff and Beacon Hill Flagstone are both part of this line. The texture and depth you get at installation is the texture and depth that lasts, because it’s manufactured into the unit rather than applied as a surface effect.

What EasyClean Adds

Look for integral sealing technology (branded EasyClean across Unilock’s EnduraColor and Elegance lines) on any paver you’re considering for an outdoor kitchen, pool deck, or anywhere spills happen. It’s factory-applied stain resistance baked into the unit, not a topical sealer you have to reapply — meaning it doesn’t wear off the way a surface-applied sealer does.

Our Recommendation

We steer clients toward Better or Best tier for anything highly visible or heavily used — driveways, pool decks, front walkways — and reserve Good tier for lower-visibility, lower-traffic areas where budget matters more than long-term color retention. Browse our Material Guides for real specs, colors, and sizing on the specific products we install most.