Tarmac Driveways

A durable, cost-effective, hard-wearing surface for everyday use

Tarmac remains one of the most practical driveway surfaces for everyday use — hard-wearing, quick to lay once the groundwork is done, and well suited to larger areas or driveways that need to stand up to regular vehicle traffic without a lot of ongoing maintenance.

A tarmac driveway is built up in layers: excavation to the correct depth, a compacted stone sub-base to carry vehicle loading, and then the tarmac itself, laid hot and compacted with a roller while it's still workable to bond it into a solid, continuous surface. Getting the falls right during laying matters as much as the material itself, since a driveway with poor drainage will pool water in low spots, which shortens the surface's life and creates a genuinely unpleasant driveway to use in wet weather. Tarmac's real strength is in larger or heavily used areas — long driveways, areas that also need to accommodate turning space, or drives shared by multiple vehicles — where its continuous surface and relatively lower cost per square metre compared to block paving make it a practical choice. It's a less flexible material than block paving in one respect: repairs to a small area can be visible as a slightly different-toned patch rather than blending seamlessly, since tarmac ages and weathers gradually across its surface. Edging, whether in block paving, kerbing or a contrasting border, is usually added to restrain the tarmac's edge and give the finished driveway a defined, tidy boundary.