How Big Is the American Lawn? 2,518 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 8,153 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 31 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 40% of its measured lawns are at least 10,000 square feet. Tennessee is close behind on the big end, 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, 51% of measured lawns are under 1,000 square feet and only 3% 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	4,296	774 to 10,836	44
Denver, CO	1,866	566 to 3,263	36
Minneapolis, MN	2,891	1,609 to 11,158	31
Atlanta, GA	4,768	1,885 to 8,958	29
Charlotte, NC	3,431	1,661 to 6,773	27
Dallas, TX	1,919	573 to 6,423	24
Milwaukee, WI	4,395	1,490 to 15,298	23
New York, NY	4,213	1,125 to 6,863	21
Detroit, MI	6,040	1,858 to 12,774	20
Kansas City, MO	4,422	2,348 to 9,636	20
Omaha, NE	3,466	1,648 to 8,585	17
Indianapolis, IN	5,088	1,250 to 11,963	17
Cincinnati, OH	4,366	1,716 to 11,053	16
San Antonio, TX	1,030	356 to 2,008	16
Columbus, OH	2,978	2,042 to 5,654	15
Fort Worth, TX	1,597	822 to 5,468	15

Detroit's median lawn is nearly six times San Antonio's. Chicago is the interesting one: a 4,296-square-foot median with a middle half that runs from 774 to 10,836, 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 a 12-pound bag does the median lawn. Most lawns are not a 50-pound-bag project.

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 2,518 lawns measured with whatgrassisthis.com's free satellite lawn size calculator between May 11, 2026 (when the map-tracing tool launched) and September 13, 2026 (end of day), by users in the United States; figures were extracted on September 14, 2026. 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 is derived from IP geolocation at the state level; 41 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 2,518 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 2,518 lawns measured by their owners on satellite imagery in 2026.
• The mean lawn is 8,153 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. 21.8% are under 1,000.
• Only 21.0% of lawns reach 10,000 square feet, and 3.1% reach a full acre.
• Wisconsin has the largest median lawn of any state with 25 or more measurements: 6,760 square feet, with 40% of its lawns at 10,000 square feet or more.
• Oregon (889) and California (965) 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 1,774 square feet, one of the seven smallest in the country.
• Detroit's median lawn (6,040 square feet) is nearly six times San Antonio's (1,030).

"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 under 3,000 square feet. 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	3,377 to 13,998	31%	16
Washington	1,238	775 to 2,730	7%	67
Idaho	1,350	634 to 2,088	0%	16
Montana	4,448	1,762 to 5,646	22%	9
North Dakota *	11,646	7,517 to 14,787	50%	4
Minnesota	4,267	2,063 to 12,162	35%	81
Wisconsin	6,760	2,648 to 15,770	40%	63
Michigan	4,338	1,374 to 10,504	27%	119
New York	3,322	1,759 to 9,240	23%	86
Massachusetts	3,445	1,763 to 7,428	24%	71
Rhode Island	1,334	807 to 5,792	6%	16
Oregon	889	479 to 1,840	4%	27
Nevada	1,890	1,180 to 3,404	13%	8
Wyoming *	2,488	2,090 to 2,887	0%	2
South Dakota *	3,174	927 to 17,071	33%	6
Iowa	4,596	1,789 to 6,666	15%	26
Illinois	3,870	1,324 to 10,322	26%	140
Indiana	3,960	1,824 to 11,974	30%	76
Ohio	3,604	1,529 to 9,032	22%	101
Pennsylvania	4,311	1,872 to 11,978	29%	63
New Jersey	4,157	1,808 to 8,107	19%	63
Connecticut	6,006	1,706 to 13,625	34%	32
California	965	522 to 2,157	3%	151
Utah	1,700	638 to 3,784	7%	43
Colorado	1,674	608 to 2,906	10%	89
Nebraska	5,248	2,225 to 8,498	9%	32
Missouri	4,736	1,961 to 10,828	29%	75
Kentucky	4,463	2,222 to 10,984	38%	13
West Virginia *	6,362	3,603 to 17,802	33%	6
Virginia	3,384	1,156 to 12,103	29%	106
Maryland	5,485	2,861 to 10,935	29%	41
Delaware	898	338 to 8,002	0%	9
Arizona	1,595	678 to 4,625	18%	28
New Mexico *	1,276	1,210 to 1,552	17%	6
Kansas	3,256	1,486 to 6,361	14%	36
Arkansas	4,803	1,620 to 7,728	23%	13
Tennessee	5,814	1,777 to 18,246	40%	48
North Carolina	4,348	1,398 to 8,182	17%	103
South Carolina	3,509	2,156 to 7,995	17%	35
Washington, DC	1,508	536 to 3,800	23%	13
Oklahoma	3,735	1,762 to 11,002	28%	39
Louisiana	2,136	1,277 to 10,366	27%	22
Mississippi	7,526	724 to 20,282	50%	8
Alabama	4,486	1,845 to 14,969	32%	41
Georgia	4,398	2,002 to 8,482	20%	80
Hawaii *	No measurements yet
Texas	1,774	775 to 4,332	10%	196
Florida	2,860	1,322 to 8,034	20%	140

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 8,153 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 6,760 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 6,760 square feet, followed by Connecticut, Tennessee, Maryland and Nebraska. 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 2,518 lawns traced on satellite imagery by their owners using our calculator between May and September 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. Counts are one measurement per person as described in the methodology; the state file sums to 2,477 because 41 measurements lacked a US state. 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 2,518 owner-measured lawns, May to September 2026, with a link to this page.