📐The bag says 12 square feet. At which depth?

✓ Tested & verified Updated: Aug 10, 2026 How we calculate this

Bag coverage

Bag size

Your bed area

sq ft

8 sq ft per bag at 3 in

one 2 cu ft bag, every depth people actually use

Depth	One bag covers	Bags for 200 sq ft	In yards
1 in	24 sq ft	9	0.62 yd
1.5 in	16 sq ft	13	0.93 yd
2 in	12 sq ft	17	1.23 yd
3 in	8 sq ft	25	1.85 yd
4 in	6 sq ft	34	2.47 yd
6 in	4 sq ft	50	3.70 yd

Try also

How many square feet does a bag of mulch cover?

The CalculatorMulch coverage chart pairs every depth with what it actually covers: one cubic yard covers 108 square feet at 3 inches, and one 2-cubic-foot bag covers 8. Coverage is not a property of the bag or of the material — it is volume divided by depth, and a bag that “covers 12 square feet” is quietly assuming 2 inches.

That is the most common reason a job runs short. Someone measures a 200-square-foot bed, reads 12 square feet on the bag, buys seventeen and lays them at the 3 inches extension services recommend — and covers about 135 square feet with nothing left. The correct figure at 3 inches is 25 bags.

Every table below is generated at build time from the same data the calculators on this site read: coverage per cubic yard and per bag, weight and tons per yard for every material we calculate with, and the depth each job wants.

How much does one cubic yard cover?

A cubic yard is the unit every bulk yard sells in, and it covers a different area at every depth — 324 square feet at one inch, a third of that at three. The last two columns are the same volume counted in bags, because that is the number you actually carry.

Depth	One cubic yard covers	Cubic yards per 100 sq ft	2 cu ft bags per 100 sq ft	1.5 cu ft bags per 100 sq ft
1 in	324 sq ft	0.31 yd	5	6
2 in	162 sq ft	0.62 yd	9	12
3 in	108 sq ft	0.93 yd	13	17
4 in	81 sq ft	1.23 yd	17	23
5 in	64.8 sq ft	1.54 yd	21	28
6 in	54 sq ft	1.85 yd	25	34
9 in	36 sq ft	2.78 yd	38	50
12 in	27 sq ft	3.70 yd	50	67

The 3-inch row is the one to memorise: a cubic yard covers a little over 100 square feet at the depth most extension services recommend for a bed. Suppliers often round it to “a yard does 100 square feet”, which is the same figure with the settling and the ragged edges already taken off.

How much does one bag cover?

Same arithmetic, smaller box. Bag size is fixed by what is inside — stone comes in half-cubic-foot bags because a bigger one could not be lifted, bark comes in 3 cu ft bags because it weighs almost nothing.

Bag size	Bags per cubic yard	Covers at 2 in	Covers at 3 in	Covers at 4 in	Usually holds
0.5 cu ft	54	3 sq ft	2 sq ft	1.5 sq ft	Pea gravel, river rock, paver sand
0.75 cu ft	36	4.5 sq ft	3 sq ft	2.3 sq ft	Premium and rubber mulch, small decorative blends
1 cu ft	27	6 sq ft	4 sq ft	3 sq ft	Compost, garden soil, soil conditioner
1.5 cu ft	18	9 sq ft	6 sq ft	4.5 sq ft	Topsoil, potting mix, dyed and rubber mulch
2 cu ft	13.5	12 sq ft	8 sq ft	6 sq ft	Shredded hardwood, the default US mulch bag
3 cu ft	9	18 sq ft	12 sq ft	9 sq ft	Pine bark, cypress, pine fines

The number printed on a bag is almost always the 2-inch column, and the depth it assumes is almost never printed beside it. Bags per cubic yard is the column that turns a shelf price into a yard price — multiply the tag on the bag by it before comparing anything with a bulk quote.

Five numbers worth quoting

One cubic yard covers 108 sq ft at 3 inches and 27 sq ft at 12 inches, because coverage is 324 divided by the depth in inches.
A 2 cu ft bag covers 8 sq ft at 3 inches, so 100 sq ft of bed at that depth takes 13 bags.
One cubic yard is 13.5 bags of 2 cu ft, 18 of 1.5 cu ft or 9 of 3 cu ft — 27 cubic feet divided by whatever the bag holds.
A cubic yard of screened topsoil weighs 2,200 lb, 3.1 times a cubic yard of shredded hardwood mulch at 700 lb, for exactly the same coverage.
A US ton of crushed stone (#57, 3/4 in) is 0.74 cubic yards at 2,700 lb per cubic yard, which covers 80 sq ft at 3 inches.

What does a cubic yard weigh, material by material?

Volume is the same for everything — a cubic yard is always 27 cubic feet — and weight is not. This is the table the tonnage on every gravel and soil page comes from, and the reason a delivery fee for stone is not the rip-off it looks like.

Material	lb per cubic yard	US tons per cubic yard	Published range	Bags per cubic yard	Usual depth	One cubic yard covers
Shredded hardwood mulch	700 lb	0.35	400–800 lb	13.5 × 2 cu ft	3 in	108 sq ft
Pine bark mulch	500 lb	0.25	400–700 lb	9 × 3 cu ft	3 in	108 sq ft
Cypress mulch	550 lb	0.28	450–750 lb	9 × 3 cu ft	3 in	108 sq ft
Rubber mulch	800 lb	0.40	600–900 lb	36 × 0.75 cu ft	3 in	108 sq ft
Engineered wood fiber	500 lb	0.25	400–650 lb	13.5 × 2 cu ft	9 in	36 sq ft
Screened topsoil	2,200 lb	1.10	2,000–2,700 lb	18 × 1.5 cu ft	4 in	81 sq ft
Garden soil / raised bed mix	1,600 lb	0.80	1,300–1,900 lb	18 × 1.5 cu ft	12 in	27 sq ft
Finished compost	1,300 lb	0.65	1,000–1,600 lb	27 × 1 cu ft	2 in	162 sq ft
Potting mix	700 lb	0.35	500–900 lb	18 × 1.5 cu ft	10 in	32.4 sq ft
Fill dirt	2,500 lb	1.25	2,200–2,900 lb	18 × 1.5 cu ft	6 in	54 sq ft
Crushed stone (#57, 3/4 in)	2,700 lb	1.35	2,500–2,900 lb	54 × 0.5 cu ft	3 in	108 sq ft
Pea gravel	2,500 lb	1.25	2,400–2,700 lb	54 × 0.5 cu ft	2 in	162 sq ft
River rock (1-3 in)	2,800 lb	1.40	2,600–3,000 lb	54 × 0.5 cu ft	3 in	108 sq ft
Sand (masonry / paver / play)	2,700 lb	1.35	2,600–3,000 lb	54 × 0.5 cu ft	1 in	324 sq ft
Decomposed granite	2,900 lb	1.45	2,700–3,100 lb	54 × 0.5 cu ft	3 in	108 sq ft

Weight is what decides whether you haul it or pay to have it dropped: the whole mulch column fits in a pickup, and almost nothing in the stone column does. The cubic yards to tons calculator applies these densities to your own volume, and mulch weight and truck loads works through what each class of vehicle can legally take.

What depth does each job want?

Depth is the input everything else on this page hangs on, so here is every default this site calculates with, the published range it sits inside, and what a cubic yard covers once you choose it.

Job	Recommended	We calculate with	One cubic yard covers	Why that depth
New mulch on bare soil	3–4 in	3 in	108 sq ft	Three inches is the point where weed seeds stop getting light. Four is the ceiling before roots start suffocating.
Topping up last year's mulch	1–2 in	1 in	324 sq ft	Measure what is left first. Mulch layered year on year is the most common cause of a mulch volcano.
Around trees and shrubs	2–4 in	3 in	108 sq ft	Keep a bare collar of 3-6 inches around the trunk. Depth is the easy part; the gap is the part people skip.
Beds on a slope	3–4 in	4 in	81 sq ft	Shredded and double-shredded mulch knits; nuggets and bark chips float away in the first storm.
Playground wood fiber	6–12 in	9 in	36 sq ft	CPSC depth rises with fall height: 6 in to about 5 ft, 9 in to 7 ft, 12 in to 12 ft, measured compacted.
Lawn repair and levelling	2–3 in	2 in	162 sq ft	Thin enough that existing grass grows back through it.
New lawn from seed or sod	4–6 in	4 in	81 sq ft	Turfgrass roots want at least four inches of loose soil to work into.
New planting bed	6–12 in	8 in	40.5 sq ft	Six inches for annuals and perennials, ten to twelve where you want shrubs.
Raised bed	6–18 in	12 in	27 sq ft	Six inches works over open ground, twelve over a hard surface, eighteen for carrots and parsnips.
Compost as a top dressing	0.25–0.5 in	0.5 in	648 sq ft	A half inch across a lawn is a full spring feed. More than that smothers grass.
Compost worked into a bed	2–3 in	2 in	162 sq ft	Keep compost under 25-30 percent of finished soil volume: it is an amendment, not a growing medium.
Decorative gravel and paths	2–3 in	3 in	108 sq ft	Two inches over landscape fabric, three where you want to stop seeing the fabric.
Gravel driveway	4–8 in	4 in	81 sq ft	Four inches minimum per layer; a full build is a base course plus a top course.
French drain trench	6–12 in	12 in	27 sq ft	Stone surrounds the pipe on all sides, so the trench takes far more than the surface suggests.
Paver base (stone)	4–6 in	4 in	81 sq ft	Four inches for a patio, six or more for anything a car parks on.
Paver bedding sand	1–1.5 in	1 in	324 sq ft	One inch, screeded, and never used to level a bad base.
Sandbox	6–12 in	8 in	40.5 sq ft	Deep enough for digging; play sand only, never masonry sand.

Two rows deserve a second look. Compost as a top dressing is half an inch, so one cubic yard dresses 648 square feet of lawn — the only job on the list where a single yard covers a whole garden. Playground wood fiber is the opposite: at the 9 inches that pairs with a 7-foot fall height, a yard covers 36 square feet, which is why play areas are quoted in truckloads.

Where to take these numbers next

For a bed measured in feet rather than read off a chart, the mulch bags calculator counts bags directly and the mulch calculator gives cubic yards. To decide whether to buy bags at all, bulk vs bagged; to convert what you already have into yards, bags to cubic yards. The reasoning behind the depths is in how deep should mulch be, and the bag-size economics in bags of mulch per cubic yard.

Frequently asked questions

How many wheelbarrows are in a cubic yard of mulch?

Nine to fourteen, because a cubic yard is 27 cubic feet and a barrow carries 2 to 3 of them without spilling — a builder’s barrow is rated at 6 cu ft, but nobody loads one to the brim and walks it across a lawn. The number that decides your afternoon is the weight per trip: 3 cubic feet of shredded hardwood mulch is about 78 lb, the same barrow of screened topsoil is about 244 lb. That is why a yard of mulch is an hour and a yard of topsoil is a day.

How much is a scoop at a landscape yard?

Ask, because a scoop is not a unit — it is one bucket of whatever loader happens to be parked there, and skid-steer buckets run from about a quarter of a cubic yard to a full one. Two suppliers quoting three scoops can therefore be more than two cubic yards apart, which at 3 inches deep is over 200 square feet of bed. Get the answer in cubic yards or cubic feet before you compare prices, and remember that half a cubic yard is 54 square feet at 3 inches.

Why is gravel sold by the ton when mulch is sold by the cubic yard?

Because weight is the honest unit for something dense and volume is the honest unit for something light. A cubic yard of #57 crushed stone is 2,700 lb — 1.35 tons — while a cubic yard of shredded hardwood mulch is 700 lb, or 0.35 of a ton, and quarry trucks are limited by the scale rather than by the box. To compare a ton price with a yard price, convert once: tons × 2,000 ÷ lb per cubic yard gives cubic yards, and cubic yards are what coverage is worked out from.

How many square feet does a ton of gravel cover?

At the 2,700 lb per cubic yard this site calculates with for #57 stone, a US ton is 0.74 cubic yards: 120 square feet at 2 inches, 80 at 3 inches and 60 at 4. Suppliers usually quote 100 square feet at 2 inches instead, because they assume damper, heavier, compacted stone — treat theirs as the conservative figure and order to it when the load is going down over fabric or being compacted.

How many 5-gallon buckets are in a cubic yard?

About 40. A 5-gallon bucket holds 0.67 of a cubic foot, and 27 divided by that is 40.4 brim-full buckets. Nobody fills them brim-full with soil, though: 5 gallons of screened topsoil weighs roughly 54 lb against 17 lb for the same bucket of mulch, so the practical bucket count for soil is higher and the practical number of trips much higher still.

How we calculate this

Every table on this page is generated at build time from the same data files the calculators on this site read, so a figure here and an answer from a widget cannot drift apart. Coverage is the 324 rule: a cubic yard is 27 cubic feet and a foot is 12 inches, so one cubic yard covers 324 ÷ depth in inches square feet — 108 sq ft at 3 inches. Per bag it is bag volume ÷ (depth ÷ 12), and bag counts for a real order are rounded up, because nobody sells half a bag. Bag sizes are the nominal volumes printed on US retail bags; settling in the bag means the delivered volume is typically a few percent lower, which is one more reason to round up. Weights are dry, loose, as-delivered pounds per cubic yard, shown next to the published spread they sit inside; organic materials gain 20–40 percent when soaked, which is why a rained-on load feels twice as heavy. Tons are US short tons of 2,000 lb, not tonnes. Depths are the defaults the depth buttons in every calculator use, taken from university extension guidance and, for playground surfacing, from the CPSC handbook read together with ASTM F1292. Figures are rounded to one decimal place the same way the calculator rounds them. Everything runs in your browser; nothing is stored or sent.

Worked example

With Bag size 2 cu ft, Your bed area 200, this page works out 8 sq ft per bag at 3 in. one 2 cu ft bag, every depth people actually use

Sources:

Cite or reference this page

You are welcome to reference the figures on this page with attribution. Every number is generated from the data source at build time — the methodology above explains how.

“The bag says 12 square feet. At which depth?.” CalculatorMulch, updated Aug 10, 2026, https://calculatormulch.com/bag-coverage-chart/

The number the label leaves out

Coverage claims on bags are not dishonest so much as incomplete. A number in square feet has to assume a depth, the manufacturer picks a shallow one because it makes the bag look further-going, and the assumption is printed in small type if at all. The volume in cubic feet is the real specification and the only one you can calculate from.

It also explains why the same bed takes wildly different numbers of bags depending on who does the arithmetic. At 2 inches a 200 square foot bed takes 17 bags; at 3 inches it takes 25; at 4 inches it takes 34. Nobody is wrong — they are answering different questions, and the bag label picked one for you without saying so.