There's no outright winner. Paving tolerates shifting soil and is usable immediately, while concrete handles heavy parked loads and large, simple areas better. At most Wollongong homes the choice hinges on three questions: how soft or soggy your ground gets, whether you can go without the driveway for roughly a week, and where the runoff ends up during an East Coast Low, which matters most on a sloping block.
We build both, so we've got no reason to push one over the other. You'll find our concrete driveways and paved driveways on their own pages, and below is a straight comparison.
Rigid concrete versus flexible paving
Everything starts here, because each surface breaks down in its own way. A slab is a single hard sheet with no gaps and plenty of strength, but enough movement in the soil below will snap it. A paved drive is a mosaic of hundreds of pieces. Any single paver is weak compared to a slab, but together they ride the ground's movement, each one shifting a fraction to absorb it.
| Factor | Concrete slab | Segmental pavers |
|---|---|---|
| Price to build | Usually cheaper per square metre on big, plain driveways | Dearer, since every paver is placed by hand |
| Soil movement | Can't flex, so movement tends to appear as cracking | Moves and resettles, a plus on unstable ground |
| Fixing damage | New patches rarely match the old surface | Pull the damaged unit and set a replacement |
| Back in use | Roughly seven days, kept damp throughout | Straight after jointing and compaction |
| Long-term heavy parking | Stronger, as the slab shares the load | Possible with a heavier build, but less tolerant |
| Pipes and cables below | Saw-cut, dig, then patch the gap | Lift the pavers, dig, and relay the originals |
| Joint upkeep | Control joints only | Sand needs topping up and weeds may appear |
Almost every point in that table comes back to the same thing: one surface is rigid and the other flexes.
Where concrete makes more sense
A slab gives you a single unbroken surface, which means no jointing sand to top up, no weeds in the cracks and no individual pavers sinking at their own pace. It's also better under parked weight, because the reinforcement spreads the load across the whole slab rather than pressing it into the bedding at one point, and that suits anyone storing a caravan, boat or work vehicle. Large, regular areas usually cost less per square metre in concrete, and you can still lift the look with exposed aggregate, a stamped pattern or colour. On a steep drive under the escarpment, a textured slab keeps its grip in a cloudburst and has no joint sand to wash away. The downsides are that you'll be parking on the street for around a week, repairs are usually visible, and reaching buried services means cutting the slab.
Where pavers make more sense
Instead of cracking, paving rides out ground movement. Across the reactive clays of Wollongong's coastal plain and foothills, that pays off year after year. The drive is ready for cars once jointing is done, and a broken paver is cheap to replace. If a new pipe or cable has to go under the driveway, we simply lift a strip, dig the trench and put the same pavers back. The catches: labour costs climb on big areas; joints need some attention, since storms can flush the sand out on sloping drives and our damp coastal air encourages moss and weeds; edging has to be done well or the paving creeps outwards; and heavy vehicles parked for weeks on end are harder on pavers than on a slab.
Matching the surface to your property
Work through the list below with your own driveway in mind. Either way, lodge a Before You Dig Australia request before excavation begins so any buried services get located and marked.
- Unstable soil: paving flexes and settles back, whereas concrete holds firm right up until it cracks.
- Downtime: paving is ready to drive on immediately, while a slab needs about seven days of damp curing.
- Fixing damage: a swapped paver blends in, while a concrete patch generally stands out.
- Heavy parked loads: a reinforced slab shares the weight more effectively.
- Big, regular areas: concrete is normally the more economical choice.
- Style: paving offers more shapes and patterns, and concrete offers a wider choice of surface finishes.
Get advice on your driveway
Let us know how your block drains, what kind of soil you're on, how easily a concrete truck can reach it and what vehicles live there. We'll give you our honest view on which surface fits, then price that option properly so you can make a fair comparison.