Highland Park / Patios

Patio Builder in Highland Park

Natural stone and paver patios built into the mature lots of Highland Park and University Park, with the base and drainage done right.

Patios in Highland Park and University Park are a different job than the open lots up north. The properties are older and tighter, the landscaping is established, and there are large oaks and pecans with root systems you have to work around rather than through. A patio here usually replaces one that has lifted or cracked after decades, or fills in a courtyard, a side garden, or the run between the house and the pool. Most of these go through a designer or architect, and we build to that standard. That is the patio work we do.

We have built patios across Dallas for 20 years, and the Park Cities is where the material and the detailing carry the most weight. We install two families, pavers and natural stone, and on these lots natural stone is what most projects call for. Bluestone, with its tight grain and blue-gray tone, sits right with the older brick and limestone homes. Travertine reads warmer and stays cool underfoot through the summer. Limestone and a wider flagstone suit a garden patio where you want the surface to feel set into the landscape. Pavers are still the value route and the easiest to lift and reset, and we lay them when the look and the budget point that way. We bring samples to the property and set them against the house and the existing stone.

The base is everything, and it is harder to get right on these lots. Dallas sits on the same expansive clay as the rest of the Metroplex, the kind that swells wet and shrinks dry, and that movement is the number one reason patios here heave and sink. On top of that, the mature tree roots and the established grades mean a patio that does not drain will trap water against the house and the roots both. We excavate, compact a proper base in lifts, and pitch the surface so water runs off and away, and we route around root zones instead of cutting through them. A patio built this way holds flat where a thin sand bed would have moved in a season.

Pattern and border are how a patio reads as designed instead of dropped in. We run banding and soldier courses to frame a space, to break a longer patio into a sitting area and a path, and to lock the field so the edges hold over time. On the Park Cities jobs we match the joint lines, the stone, and the tone to the home and to whatever the designer has specified, so the patio looks original to the property.

A patio is usually the floor for the rest of the space. It carries out to a fire pit or an outdoor kitchen, and on the sloped or terraced lots common here it sits above a retaining wall or wraps a low seat wall. Building those together means one crew, one stone palette, and one timeline, which matters most on a tight lot where access and staging are limited.

On budget, a paver patio generally runs about $18 to $30 per square foot installed, and natural stone like bluestone or travertine runs roughly $30 to $55 and up, so a typical Highland Park patio lands anywhere from $9,000 to $30,000 and higher depending on size, material, and what it ties into. Most patios go in over 1 to 2 weeks, a little longer where access is tight. We build throughout Highland Park and University Park, and you can compare a patio in Southlake. Want a real number for your yard? Fill out the form for a free on-site estimate. We measure it, we quote it.

For the rest of what we do in the Park Cities, start at the Highland Park service area page.