How Big Is the American Lawn? 3,034 Measured Yards Say 3,000 Square Feet, Not a Quarter Acre

How big American lawns actually are

Here is every measured lawn sorted into size bands. The shape is the story: a big hump between 1,000 and 5,000 square feet, then a long tail of large yards that drags the average up without moving the typical lawn at all.

Where the quarter-acre number comes from

The figure that gets repeated is 10,871 square feet, almost exactly a quarter acre. It is an average lot size, and a lot includes the house, the driveway, the garage, the patio and the beds. Subtract those and most lots leave a lot less grass than people picture. Our numbers are the grass alone, because that is what people trace when they want to know how much fertilizer or seed to buy. Even measured generously, the mean of 7,925 square feet lands below the lot figure, and the median lands at 28% of it.

The map: median lawn size by state

Under 2,000 sq ft2,000 to 3,499 sq ft3,500 to 4,999 sq ft5,000 sq ft and upLimited data (fewer than 8 lawns)

The pattern is mostly a housing-density map. Western metros with newer, tighter lots and water-conscious landscaping post the smallest lawns. The Midwest, with older suburbs on bigger lots and cheap land at the edge of every city, posts the largest. The Northeast and the South sit in between, with a wide spread inside each state.

The states with the biggest lawns

Among the 32 states with at least 25 measured lawns, these have the largest medians:

Wisconsin is the standout. Its median is more than double the national figure and 39% of its measured lawns are at least 10,000 square feet. Tennessee has the longest big-yard tail, with a top quarter of lawns above 18,000 square feet, and it is a reminder that these are lawns people chose to measure: rural Tennessee yards that need a riding mower show up here more than a Nashville townhouse strip does.

The states with the smallest lawns

The bottom of the list is the West Coast and the Mountain West. Oregon and California both come in under 1,000 square feet, which is a lawn you can mow in ten minutes with a push reel mower. In California, 54% of measured lawns are under 1,000 square feet and only 4% reach 10,000. Two decades of drought pricing, lawn-removal rebates and small infill lots show up plainly in the data.

City check

State medians hide the metro split. Here are the cities with at least 15 measured lawns:

Metro	Median lawn (sq ft)	Middle half of lawns	Lawns
Chicago, IL	4,132	682 to 9,887	54
Minneapolis, MN	5,014	1,892 to 10,636	42
Denver, CO	1,294	566 to 2,982	40
Charlotte, NC	3,652	1,976 to 7,050	36
Dallas, TX	1,740	575 to 5,508	31
Atlanta, GA	4,419	1,489 to 8,722	30
Kansas City, MO	3,750	1,690 to 8,940	30
Omaha, NE	3,884	2,020 to 8,259	26
New York, NY	4,298	1,340 to 7,201	26
Milwaukee, WI	4,395	1,490 to 15,298	23
Detroit, MI	5,916	2,089 to 10,603	21
Indianapolis, IN	8,931	1,470 to 13,023	21
Orlando, FL	4,386	1,978 to 8,653	20
Columbus, OH	4,362	2,042 to 5,654	19
Seattle, WA	1,232	656 to 3,924	18
Houston, TX	4,291	800 to 10,676	17
San Antonio, TX	1,069	366 to 2,253	17
Cincinnati, OH	5,293	1,893 to 14,076	16
Salt Lake City, UT	1,840	651 to 3,153	16
Fort Worth, TX	1,908	862 to 4,241	16
Washington, DC	2,164	636 to 8,043	16
Austin, TX	2,936	1,518 to 4,282	15
St Louis, MO	8,961	2,655 to 24,614	15
Oklahoma City, OK	2,417	1,855 to 3,610	15

Detroit's median lawn is more than five times San Antonio's. St. Louis (8,961) and Indianapolis (8,931) post the biggest city medians, but with 15 and 21 lawns they are also the most likely to move. Chicago is the interesting one: a 4,132-square-foot median with a middle half that runs from 682 to 9,887, which is the city bungalow and the collar-county half-acre living in the same table.

What a 3,000-square-foot lawn means for you

If you never measured yours, the odds say it is closer to 3,000 square feet than to a quarter acre, and that changes a few purchases:

• Fertilizer: one bag rated for 5,000 square feet covers the median lawn with room to spare. Buying the 15,000-square-foot bag for a typical lawn means storing it for two seasons. The fertilizer calculator converts your exact area into pounds of product.
• Water: an inch of water on 3,044 square feet is about 1,900 gallons. That is the number to check against your water bill, not the 6,800 gallons a quarter acre would need.
• Mowing: a 21-inch mower covers the median lawn in around 15 minutes of walking. A riding mower does not pay for itself until well past the 10,000-square-foot mark, which only a fifth of lawns reach.
• Seed: overseeding at 4 pounds per 1,000 square feet means about 12 pounds of seed for the median lawn. Most lawns are not a 50-pound-bag project. The overseeding calculator works out the pounds for your exact area.

Not sure where yours lands? Trace it on the satellite map and you will have the number in a minute, and it will be a data point in next year's edition.

Methodology

Data comes from 3,034 lawns measured with whatgrassisthis.com's free satellite lawn size calculator between May 11, 2026 (when the map-tracing tool launched) and September 22, 2026 (end of day), by users in the United States. Figures were extracted on September 23, 2026. The study first ran on September 14 with 2,518 lawns measured through September 13; this update adds the nine days since.

Each person counts once: where someone traced more than one shape, we keep their last completed measurement, so partial first attempts do not double-count. Measurements are the area of the polygon a person traced over satellite imagery (98% of the sample) or entered as a rectangle by hand (2%), which means they describe the grass a person considers their lawn, not the lot. We excluded measurements under 100 square feet and over 200,000 square feet (about 4.6 acres) as tests or fields rather than lawns. Location comes from IP geolocation at the state level; 43 measurements lacked a US state and appear only in the national figures. We report medians rather than means because a handful of multi-acre yards moves the mean by thousands of square feet without changing what a typical lawn looks like.

Four honest limitations: (1) this is a sample of people who chose to measure their lawn, which skews toward homeowners planning to buy fertilizer, seed or a mower, and likely under-represents both people with no lawn and people with very large rural properties who never measure; (2) a traced polygon can include beds, a pool deck or a driveway if the person drew loosely, and can omit side yards if they drew tightly; (3) location reflects where the person was when they measured, which is nearly always but not guaranteed to be where the lawn is; (4) with 3,034 lawns nationally, state figures below about 25 measurements are directional, and states with fewer than 8 are marked as limited data. The quarter-acre comparison figure of 10,871 square feet is the widely repeated average residential lot size and is quoted here only as the number readers are likely to have seen; it is not our data.

Quick stats, free to quote

Writers and researchers: every line below is free to quote with a link to this page.

• The median American lawn is 3,044 square feet (0.07 acre), based on 3,034 lawns measured by their owners on satellite imagery in 2026.
• The mean lawn is 7,925 square feet. The gap between mean and median is the long tail of large rural yards.
• 62.7% of American lawns are under 5,000 square feet. 21.5% are under 1,000.
• Only 21.0% of lawns reach 10,000 square feet, and 2.8% reach a full acre.
• Wisconsin has the largest median lawn of any state with 25 or more measurements: 6,375 square feet, with 39% of its lawns at 10,000 square feet or more.
• Oregon (874) and California (914) have the smallest median lawns. More than half of California's measured lawns are under 1,000 square feet.
• Texas has a median lawn of 1,804 square feet, one of the seven smallest in the country.
• Detroit's median lawn (5,916 square feet) is more than five times San Antonio's (1,069).

"The quarter-acre lawn is a real thing, it is just not the typical thing. When people trace their own grass, half of them come in at about 3,000 square feet or less. That is one bag of fertilizer and fifteen minutes with a push mower, and it is worth knowing before you buy for a yard three times that size."

Anthony Treviso, founder, whatgrassisthis.com

Appendix: all 50 states + DC

State	Median lawn (sq ft)	Middle half of lawns	10,000 sq ft or more	Lawns
Alaska *	5,920	5,014 to 6,826	0%	2
Maine *	4,178	3,797 to 7,312	29%	7
Vermont *	8,344	6,842 to 20,410	33%	3
New Hampshire	7,476	2,709 to 14,317	33%	18
Washington	1,244	738 to 2,529	8%	80
Idaho	1,587	833 to 2,422	5%	19
Montana	4,448	1,762 to 5,646	22%	9
North Dakota *	11,646	7,517 to 14,787	50%	4
Minnesota	4,654	2,106 to 12,040	33%	98
Wisconsin	6,375	2,039 to 15,633	39%	69
Michigan	4,338	1,382 to 10,605	28%	143
New York	3,238	1,454 to 9,457	23%	104
Massachusetts	3,618	1,594 to 8,394	25%	84
Rhode Island	2,284	857 to 5,916	6%	18
Oregon	874	482 to 1,582	3%	31
Nevada	1,416	686 to 3,332	11%	9
Wyoming *	2,488	2,090 to 2,887	0%	2
South Dakota	3,174	598 to 10,672	25%	8
Iowa	2,903	1,182 to 6,460	13%	31
Illinois	3,791	1,278 to 10,138	25%	169
Indiana	4,528	1,978 to 11,900	32%	91
Ohio	4,338	1,673 to 9,453	24%	124
Pennsylvania	3,882	1,468 to 11,294	27%	81
New Jersey	4,101	1,836 to 7,950	17%	76
Connecticut	4,953	1,462 to 13,242	34%	38
California	914	516 to 2,072	4%	175
Utah	1,616	651 to 3,153	6%	48
Colorado	1,384	669 to 2,844	9%	104
Nebraska	4,510	2,126 to 7,990	13%	47
Missouri	4,397	1,690 to 9,862	26%	98
Kentucky	4,114	1,620 to 12,094	40%	20
West Virginia *	6,362	3,603 to 17,802	33%	6
Virginia	3,363	1,114 to 11,286	27%	133
Maryland	5,055	1,473 to 10,935	28%	57
Delaware	3,636	758 to 8,150	8%	12
Arizona	1,510	664 to 3,608	17%	30
New Mexico	1,476	1,222 to 2,602	13%	8
Kansas	3,630	2,111 to 6,606	19%	53
Arkansas	4,803	1,620 to 7,728	23%	13
Tennessee	4,736	1,782 to 18,183	38%	53
North Carolina	4,284	1,522 to 8,533	19%	132
South Carolina	3,846	1,712 to 8,603	23%	44
Washington, DC	2,164	636 to 8,043	25%	16
Oklahoma	3,270	1,756 to 10,051	26%	46
Louisiana	2,908	1,410 to 10,514	27%	26
Mississippi	5,803	741 to 15,164	44%	9
Alabama	4,007	1,976 to 12,296	31%	55
Georgia	4,170	1,678 to 8,559	20%	94
Hawaii *	No measurements yet
Texas	1,804	822 to 4,297	9%	228
Florida	2,900	1,332 to 7,933	20%	166

Frequently asked questions

What is the average lawn size in the US?

The median lawn measured by homeowners in 2026 is 3,044 square feet, about 0.07 acre. The mean is 7,925 square feet because a small number of very large yards pull it up. The often-quoted quarter acre (10,871 square feet) is an average lot size, not a lawn size.

How many square feet is a quarter acre?

A quarter acre is 10,890 square feet. Only about 1 in 5 measured lawns is that large.

What is the average yard size by state?

Measured lawn (not lot) medians by state run from under 1,000 square feet in Oregon and California to 6,375 in Wisconsin. The appendix table above lists all 50 states plus DC. Published average yard size by state figures are lot sizes and run several times larger than the grass they contain.

Which state has the biggest lawns?

Wisconsin, with a median measured lawn of 6,375 square feet, followed by Maryland, Connecticut, Tennessee and Minnesota. Oregon and California have the smallest, both under 1,000 square feet.

How do I measure my lawn?

Use the free satellite lawn size calculator: type your address, trace the outline of your grass, and it returns the area in square feet and acres, minus the house and driveway.

Where does this data come from?

From 3,034 lawns traced on satellite imagery by their owners using our calculator between May 11 and September 22, 2026, one measurement per person. Full details are in the methodology section above.

For media and bloggers

You are welcome to republish the state map, the charts, the appendix table and the founder quote in your coverage, with attribution and a link to this page as the source (CC BY 4.0). Writing about one state? Every appendix row has a direct anchor: this page's address plus #wisconsin, #california, #texas, and so on.

The raw data is downloadable: median, quartiles and size bands by state, the national size distribution, and metro medians. The downloads are the first cut, through September 13, 2026: 2,518 lawns, one measurement per person, and the state file sums to 2,477 because 41 measurements lacked a US state. The figures on this page run through September 22. Need a cut we did not publish, or a comment for a story? Contact us through the site and we will turn it around quickly. This is a companion to our State of the American Lawn 2026 study on which grasses grow where, and both are refreshed in season.

Cite this data

This study is free to reference. Cite it as: "How Big Is the American Lawn? 2026," whatgrassisthis.com, based on 3,034 owner-measured lawns, May to September 2026, with a link to this page.