Advanced options
Rates assume dry grass at a sensible height: wet or overgrown grass halves your speed and clogs the box. The one-third rule keeps lawns healthy: never remove more than a third of the blade in one cut. Weekly in the May-June surge, fortnightly either side, and let it grow longer in drought: longer grass shades its own roots.
What The Lawn Mowing Time Calculator Works Out
- Per cut: lawn area divided by the mower's coverage rate, plus 20% for edges, turns and the watering-can slalom. A 34cm electric push mower covers about 800 m2 an hour of dry grass once overlap is counted, a 42cm self-propelled petrol machine 1,200, a hand cylinder 500 and a ride-on 4,300 or more, so a typical 200 m2 suburban lawn is a 15 to 20 minute job.
- Over the season: the per-cut time multiplied by 26 cuts, which is roughly weekly through the May-June surge and fortnightly on the shoulders from March to October. It usually adds up to a modest working day a year.
- Cut it faster: every flower-bed island is turning overhead, a wider deck covers more per pass, and long straight runs beat fiddly patterns. The fastest mow of all is a smaller lawn: meadow corners and no-mow areas trade minutes for biodiversity.
- Custom mowing rate (advanced): enter your own m2 per hour if you have timed a cut. Deck width in metres x walking speed in metres per hour, less about 10% for overlap, gives the theoretical figure.
- Overhead percentage (advanced): the default 20% suits an open rectangle with a few beds. A lawn broken up by trees, paths and borders can run 40% to 50%; a bowling-green rectangle might be 10%.
- Cuts per season (advanced): 26 is a typical UK year. Fine lawns cut twice weekly in summer can reach 40; a relaxed regime with a dry summer may be 18 to 20.
- Strimming and edging (advanced): minutes per visit for the strimmer and edging shears, which the mower rate does not include. Ten to fifteen minutes is common on a terraced-house lawn with borders on three sides.
- Comparison mower (advanced): what a different machine would take on the same lawn and the hours saved or added over the season. Self-propelled and ride-on machines earn their keep somewhere past the half acre where walking becomes the job.
- Paying a gardener (advanced): the visit time at your chosen hourly rate with a one-hour minimum, multiplied by the cuts. UK gardeners typically charge GBP 20 to GBP 35 an hour, so a 200 m2 lawn costs around GBP 650 a season to have mown, which is the yardstick for any mower upgrade.
- Mower comparison table (advanced): per-cut, season and gardener-cost figures for all four mower types side by side, using your overhead, edging and cut-count settings.