How many cubic feet are in a yard of topsoil? The clean answer is 27, and it never changes. A cubic yard is a cube that measures one yard, or three feet, on every side, so its volume is 3 feet times 3 feet times 3 feet, which comes to 27 cubic feet. That single number is one of the most useful facts you can carry into any landscaping or garden project, because bulk topsoil is sold by the cubic yard while bagged topsoil is sold by the cubic foot, and the only way to compare the two, or to plan a delivery, is to move between the two units. Once you know that one yard equals 27 cubic feet, a whole set of everyday questions falls into place: how many bags of topsoil make a yard, how much a scoop from the yard holds, how far a load will spread, and how many cubic feet you need for a bed of a given size. This guide walks through the 27 answer and the simple box geometry behind it, then shows how to convert cubic feet to yards and back, how bag sizes and forty-pound bags fit in, how big a loader scoop really is, and how cubic feet turn into coverage on the ground, with a full conversion chart and worked examples so you can plan your own order without second-guessing the math.
Once you know a yard holds 27 cubic feet, let the Dirt Calculator or the Topsoil Calculator turn your area and depth straight into cubic feet and cubic yards, so you can order bulk or bags with the numbers already worked out.
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How many cubic feet are in a yard of topsoil?
There are 27 cubic feet in a cubic yard of topsoil. This is a fixed conversion, not an estimate, and it holds for any material you can measure by volume, whether that is topsoil, mulch, sand, gravel, or concrete. A yard of topsoil is always 27 cubic feet, and a cubic foot of topsoil is always one twenty-seventh of a yard. Unlike weight, which shifts with moisture and soil type, volume conversions are pure geometry and stay the same no matter how wet or heavy the soil happens to be.
The reason people ask how many cubic feet in a yard of topsoil so often is that the two units live in different parts of the buying process. When you order bulk topsoil from a landscape supplier, they quote it in cubic yards and deliver it loose by the truckload. When you buy topsoil at a garden center or home improvement store, it comes in bags labelled in cubic feet, usually 0.75, 1, or 1.5 cubic feet each. To compare a bulk price against a bagged price, or to work out how many bags equal a delivered yard, you have to translate between yards and cubic feet, and the number that does it is 27.
Keep that figure in your head and a lot of topsoil math becomes quick. Need to know how many one cubic foot bags make a yard? It is 27. Half a yard? That is 13.5 cubic feet. Two yards? That is 54 cubic feet. The rest of this guide unpacks where the 27 comes from and shows how to use it for bags, scoops, coverage, and full project estimates, but if you remember nothing else, remember that one cubic yard of topsoil equals 27 cubic feet. To turn your own bed or border into a volume in both units at once, the Dirt Calculator handles the arithmetic for you.
Why a yard equals 27 cubic feet: the 3x3x3 box
The 27 comes straight from the shape of a cubic yard, and picturing it makes the number stick. A yard is a unit of length equal to 3 feet. A cubic yard is the volume of a cube that is one yard long, one yard wide, and one yard tall, which is the same as saying 3 feet by 3 feet by 3 feet. To find the volume of any box you multiply length by width by height, so 3 times 3 times 3 gives 27 cubic feet. That is the whole derivation, and it is why the answer is a solid, unchanging number rather than a range.
It helps to see why you cannot just multiply by 3. A common slip is to think that because a yard is 3 feet, a cubic yard must be 3 cubic feet. But you are scaling in three directions at once, not one. The length triples, the width triples, and the height triples, and 3 times 3 times 3 is 27, not 3. If you imagine stacking one foot cubes inside a yard cube, you would lay down a bottom layer of 3 by 3, which is 9 cubes, then stack that layer three high, giving 9 times 3, or 27 little cubes. Each of those small cubes is exactly one cubic foot of topsoil.
This box picture is also the key to visualizing a delivered yard on your driveway. A cubic yard of topsoil, dumped loose, forms a pile that would fill a 3 foot by 3 foot by 3 foot box if you could pour it in without spilling. In practice a loose pile spreads wider and lower than a neat cube, but the volume is the same 27 cubic feet. If you want a fuller sense of how large that pile looks and how much space it takes up on the ground, the guide on how big a yard of topsoil really is paints the picture in real driveway terms. For now, the takeaway is that 27 cubic feet is not an arbitrary figure, it is simply 3 by 3 by 3.
Converting cubic feet to cubic yards and back
Because 1 cubic yard equals 27 cubic feet, moving between the two units is a single multiplication or division. To go from cubic yards to cubic feet, multiply by 27. To go from cubic feet to cubic yards, divide by 27. That is the entire conversion, and it works in both directions for any amount of topsoil.
Say a supplier quotes you 3 cubic yards. Multiply 3 by 27 and you get 81 cubic feet, which tells you how many bags you would need to match that delivery. Working the other way, suppose you have measured a project and worked out that you need 60 cubic feet of topsoil. Divide 60 by 27 and you get about 2.2 cubic yards, which is the figure a bulk supplier wants to hear. A few conversions come up so often they are worth memorizing: half a yard is 13.5 cubic feet, a quarter yard is 6.75 cubic feet, and a third of a yard, which is what many small raised beds need, is 9 cubic feet.
Tip: When you are standing in a store deciding between bags and a bulk load, do the division in your head as cubic feet divided by 27. If the number of cubic feet you need is well under 27, bags usually win on convenience. Once you are past a full yard, a bulk delivery is almost always cheaper per cubic foot.
The one place people trip up is depth. Length and width are usually measured in feet already, but depth is almost always in inches, and inches have to become feet before you multiply. To convert, divide the depth in inches by 12. So 3 inches is 0.25 feet, 4 inches is 0.33 feet, and 6 inches is 0.5 feet. Skip that step and your cubic feet will be twelve times too large, which is the single most common topsoil estimating error. If you would rather not juggle the units at all, the Cubic Yard Calculator and the Dirt Calculator take feet and inches directly and hand back both cubic feet and cubic yards.
How many cubic feet are in a bag of topsoil?
Bagged topsoil is sold by volume, and the volume is printed on the bag in cubic feet. The three sizes you will run into most are the 0.75 cubic foot bag, the 1 cubic foot bag, and the larger 1.5 cubic foot bag. Smaller specialty bags of 0.5 cubic feet show up for potting blends, and the occasional 2 cubic foot bag appears for mulch, but for plain topsoil the 0.75 and 1 cubic foot sizes cover most of what is on the shelf.
Knowing the cubic feet per bag is what lets you scale up to a yard. Since a yard is 27 cubic feet, you divide 27 by the bag size to find how many bags make a yard. A 1 cubic foot bag means 27 bags to the yard. A 0.75 cubic foot bag means 36 bags to the yard, because 27 divided by 0.75 is 36. A 1.5 cubic foot bag means 18 bags to the yard. Those three numbers, 36, 27, and 18, are worth keeping handy, because they turn any bagged price into a per-yard price you can compare against bulk delivery.
The cubic feet on the label also tell you what each bag will do once it is open. A 1 cubic foot bag spread 1 inch deep covers about 12 square feet, or about 4 square feet at a more typical 3 inches. A 0.75 cubic foot bag covers about 9 square feet at 1 inch, or 3 square feet at 3 inches. That is useful for topping up a small bed, where buying a couple of bags is easier than arranging a delivery. When the job grows past a handful of bags, though, the sheer number needed to reach a yard starts to favor bulk, and the article on how many bags of topsoil make a yard lays out that trade-off with a full chart.
How many cubic feet are in a 40 lb bag of topsoil?
Some topsoil, especially at big-box stores, is sold by weight rather than by volume, and the 40-pound bag is the most common. This raises a fair question: if the bag is labelled in pounds, how many cubic feet does it actually hold? The working answer is that a 40-pound bag of topsoil holds roughly 0.75 cubic feet, which is why so many volume-labelled bags and weight-labelled bags land at similar sizes. Three-quarters of a cubic foot of ordinary, slightly moist topsoil weighs in the neighborhood of 40 pounds, so the two labelling systems quietly agree.
That figure is an estimate rather than a fixed conversion, and the reason is moisture. A cubic foot of topsoil weighs somewhere between about 74 and 100 pounds depending on how wet and dense it is, so 40 pounds could be as little as 0.4 cubic feet of heavy, saturated soil or as much as 0.9 cubic feet of dry, fluffy, screened soil. For planning, 0.75 cubic feet per 40-pound bag is a sound middle estimate, but if the bags feel unusually heavy and damp, assume you are getting a little less actual volume for your money. The full relationship between weight and volume is covered in the guide on how much a yard of topsoil weighs.
Using the 0.75 cubic foot estimate, it takes about 36 of the 40-pound bags to equal one cubic yard, the same count as a 0.75 cubic foot volume bag. That means a single bulk yard is roughly 1,440 pounds of bagged soil to buy, carry, and open, which puts the appeal of a bulk delivery in perspective the moment your project needs more than a few bags. If your store sells by weight and you are trying to hit a target volume, convert first: divide the cubic feet you need by 0.75 to get the number of 40-pound bags, then sanity-check the total against a bulk quote using the Dirt Calculator.
How big is a scoop of topsoil in cubic feet?
Many landscape yards sell loose topsoil by the scoop, meaning one bucket of a front-end loader or skid steer tipped into your truck or trailer. A scoop is a convenient unit for the seller, but it is a loose one for the buyer, because the size of a scoop depends entirely on the size of the machine and how full the operator fills the bucket. There is no universal scoop, so it always pays to ask what a given yard means by the word before you buy.
As a rough guide, a scoop at most landscape yards runs from about half a cubic yard to a full cubic yard, which is roughly 13.5 to 27 cubic feet. A common mid-size loader bucket holds close to a cubic yard when heaped, so at plenty of suppliers one scoop is treated as one yard, or 27 cubic feet. Smaller skid-steer buckets hold nearer half a yard, around 13.5 cubic feet, so at those yards two scoops make a yard. Because the range is this wide, a scoop can mean anywhere from about 13 to 27 cubic feet, and the only reliable way to know is to ask the supplier how many cubic feet or cubic yards their scoop holds.
Ask the volume, not the name. A scoop is only useful once you know whether it is half a yard or a full yard, so ask for the figure in cubic yards or cubic feet before you pay.
Check what your truck can carry. One full scoop of topsoil at a yard is roughly a ton, which is more than a half-ton pickup should legally haul, so match the scoop to the vehicle.
Confirm heaped versus struck. A bucket filled to a rounded heap holds noticeably more than one filled level, so a heaped scoop is closer to a full yard.
Once you know how many cubic feet a supplier’s scoop holds, you can plan in the same units as the rest of this guide. If a scoop is 27 cubic feet you are buying a yard per scoop, and if it is 13.5 cubic feet you need two scoops for a yard. To work out how many scoops your project needs, find your volume in cubic feet with the Dirt Calculator, then divide by the scoop size the yard quotes you.
How many bags of topsoil make a yard?
This is the question the cubic-feet conversion was built to answer, and it flows directly from the 27. To find how many bags equal a cubic yard, divide 27 cubic feet by the size of the bag in cubic feet. Because bags come in a few standard sizes, the answers settle into a short list you can memorize and reuse on every project.
A 0.75 cubic foot bag, the size that also corresponds to most 40-pound bags, takes 36 bags to make a yard, since 27 divided by 0.75 is 36. A 1 cubic foot bag takes 27 bags to the yard, one bag for each cubic foot. A 1.5 cubic foot bag takes 18 bags to the yard, because 27 divided by 1.5 is 18. And a small 0.5 cubic foot bag takes a hefty 54 bags to reach a yard. Those counts are the reason bulk delivery wins on anything sizeable: hauling, lifting, and slicing open three dozen bags to fill what one truck could tip in a single load is a lot of work.
The same division scales to fractions of a yard, which is what most home projects actually need. Half a yard is 13.5 cubic feet, so that is 18 of the 0.75 cubic foot bags or about 14 of the 1 cubic foot bags. A third of a yard, a typical fill for a modest raised bed, is 9 cubic feet, which is 12 of the 0.75 cubic foot bags or 9 of the 1 cubic foot bags. Once you can move between cubic feet and bag counts this fluidly, you can price bags against bulk in seconds and pick whichever suits the size of the job. The companion guide on bags of topsoil in a yard carries a full bag-count chart for every common size and fraction of a yard.
Work out the cubic feet you need, then compare it against the 27 in a yard using the guide on how much topsoil you need, and confirm the volume with the Dirt Calculator before you choose.
Turning cubic feet into coverage on the ground
Cubic feet measure volume, but what you usually care about on a project is coverage, the area a given amount of topsoil will spread over at the depth you want. The link between the two is depth, and the arithmetic is simple once you see it. A cubic foot of topsoil spread one inch deep covers 12 square feet, because a cubic foot is 12 inches by 12 inches by 12 inches, and slicing that into a one-inch-thick sheet lays it out over a 12 inch by 12 inch by 12 layer, which is 12 square feet of surface.
From there, deeper layers cover proportionally less. Spread that same cubic foot 2 inches deep and it covers 6 square feet, at 3 inches it covers 4 square feet, and at 4 inches it covers 3 square feet. Scale up to a full cubic yard of 27 cubic feet and the numbers become the ones landscapers quote all the time: one yard covers about 324 square feet at 1 inch, about 162 square feet at 2 inches, about 108 square feet at 3 inches, and about 81 square feet at 4 inches deep. Those are the figures to reach for when you are deciding whether one yard will finish a lawn topdressing or a garden bed.
Depth choice depends on the job. A light topdressing over an existing lawn might be only a quarter to half an inch, which stretches a yard a long way. Establishing a new bed or a vegetable garden usually calls for 4 to 6 inches of fresh topsoil, which eats through a yard quickly, so a 200 square foot bed at 6 inches deep needs about 100 cubic feet, or nearly four yards. Getting the depth right is where most over- and under-ordering happens, so it is worth being deliberate about it. For a deeper walk through depth choices and how they map to an order, the guide on how much topsoil you need is the natural next read, and the Topsoil Calculator turns any area and depth into cubic feet and yards at once.
Topsoil conversion chart: cubic feet, yards, and bags
The chart below pulls the conversions together in one place. The first block moves between cubic feet and cubic yards, and the second block shows how many bags of each common size it takes to fill a yard. Every figure traces back to the same fact, that one cubic yard equals 27 cubic feet, so once you are comfortable with the chart you can rebuild any row from memory.
| Cubic yards | Cubic feet | Rough coverage at 3 in deep |
|---|---|---|
| 0.25 yd | 6.75 cu ft | ~27 sq ft |
| 0.33 yd | 9 cu ft | ~36 sq ft |
| 0.5 yd | 13.5 cu ft | ~54 sq ft |
| 1 yd | 27 cu ft | ~108 sq ft |
| 2 yd | 54 cu ft | ~216 sq ft |
| 3 yd | 81 cu ft | ~324 sq ft |
| 5 yd | 135 cu ft | ~540 sq ft |
| 10 yd | 270 cu ft | ~1,080 sq ft |
The second table answers the bags-per-yard question for every common bag size, so you can price a bagged option against a bulk load without redoing the division each time.
| Bag size | Bags per cubic yard | Bags per half yard |
|---|---|---|
| 0.5 cu ft | 54 bags | 27 bags |
| 0.75 cu ft (typical 40 lb bag) | 36 bags | 18 bags |
| 1 cu ft | 27 bags | 14 bags |
| 1.5 cu ft | 18 bags | 9 bags |
| 2 cu ft | 13.5 bags | 7 bags |
Read the two tables together and the whole picture appears: pick the cubic feet your project needs from the first table, then use the second to see how many bags of a given size that would take, or divide by 27 to see it as bulk yards. To generate these numbers for your exact area rather than reading them off a chart, the Dirt Calculator and Cubic Yard Calculator will produce them from your length, width, and depth.
Worked examples: from a bed to cubic feet and yards
The fastest way to make the conversion second nature is to run a few real projects through it. Each example follows the same three steps: measure length, width, and depth in feet, multiply to get cubic feet, then divide by 27 to get cubic yards. Watch how the depth conversion from inches to feet does the quiet work in every one.
Six inches is 0.5 feet, so the volume is 4 times 8 times 0.5, which is 16 cubic feet. Divide by 27 and that is about 0.6 cubic yards. In bags, 16 cubic feet is about 16 of the 1 cubic foot bags or about 22 of the 0.75 cubic foot bags. This is a clear case where bags are the easy choice.
Three inches is 0.25 feet, so the volume is 10 times 12 times 0.25, which is 30 cubic feet. Divide by 27 and that is about 1.1 cubic yards. At just over a yard, this is right on the line where a bulk scoop starts to beat buying 30-plus bags.
Four inches is 0.33 feet, so the volume is 20 times 25 times 0.33, which is about 165 cubic feet. Divide by 27 and that is about 6.1 cubic yards. At this size bulk delivery is the only practical route, since 165 cubic feet would be well over 200 bags.
The pattern is always the same, and the only figure you ever divide by is 27. Notice how quickly the cubic feet climb once the area grows, which is why a project that feels small on paper can turn into several yards. Round your final answer up a little to allow for settling and uneven ground, usually about 10 percent extra, so you are not left short at the end of the job. If you would rather skip the hand math, enter these same dimensions into the Topsoil Calculator and it will return the cubic feet and cubic yards for each one.
How to measure so your cubic feet come out right
The conversion math is only as good as the measurements feeding it, and a small error in the field turns into a large error in cubic feet. Measuring carefully at the start is what keeps you from ordering half a yard too little or a yard too much. Three habits make the difference: measure in the right units, handle irregular shapes sensibly, and settle on a realistic depth.
Start with length and width in feet, because feet are the unit the volume formula wants. A tape measure or a long measuring wheel does the job for beds and lawns. For depth, decide how thick a layer you actually need and convert it to feet by dividing the inches by 12, since this is the step people forget. If your area is not a tidy rectangle, break it into rectangles you can measure separately, find the cubic feet of each, and add them up. A curved bed can be approximated closely enough by treating it as a rectangle of its average length and width, and a circle is its radius times itself, times 3.14, times the depth in feet.
Depth deserves a moment of thought because it drives the volume as strongly as area does. For topdressing a lawn, a quarter to half an inch is plenty. For a fresh planting bed, 4 to 6 inches of good topsoil gives roots room to establish. For filling a raised bed or leveling a low spot, measure the actual depth you need to fill rather than guessing, because a few extra inches over a large area adds up to yards. Once you have length, width, and depth in feet, multiply them for cubic feet and divide by 27 for yards, or hand the three numbers to the Dirt Calculator. For more on picking the right depth for different jobs, the guide on how much topsoil you need goes deeper into the choices.
Common cubic-feet mistakes and how to dodge them
A handful of predictable errors trip up most people converting between cubic feet and yards, and every one of them is easy to sidestep once you know to look for it. Catching these before you order saves you a second delivery fee or a pile of soil you cannot use.
The first and most costly is forgetting to turn depth from inches into feet. If you multiply length in feet by width in feet by depth in inches, your answer comes out twelve times too big, because you have mixed units. Always divide the depth in inches by 12 first. The second mistake is the multiply-by-3 slip, assuming a cubic yard is 3 cubic feet because a yard is 3 feet. It is 27, because volume scales in all three directions. The third is confusing loose and settled volume: bulk topsoil is sold loose and settles by roughly 10 to 20 percent once spread and watered in, so order about 10 to 15 percent extra if you need the finished depth to hold.
Convert depth to feet first. Divide inches by 12 before you multiply, or your cubic feet will be twelve times too high.
Remember it is 27, not 3. A cubic yard is 3 by 3 by 3 feet, which is 27 cubic feet, not 3.
Add for settling. Order about 10 to 15 percent extra so the bed still sits at the depth you wanted after it settles.
The last common slip is comparing a bagged price to a bulk price without converting to the same unit. A bag priced per cubic foot only looks cheap until you multiply by the 27 bags of the 1 cubic foot size, or 36 of the 0.75 size, that a yard actually needs. Always bring both options to a per-yard price before you decide. If you want a plain-language look at how a delivered yard compares in size and value to the bagged equivalent, the guide on how big a yard of topsoil is sets the two side by side, and the Cubic Yard Calculator keeps your units consistent along the way.
Frequently asked questions
How many cubic feet are in a yard of topsoil?
There are 27 cubic feet in a cubic yard of topsoil, and this never changes. A cubic yard is a cube measuring 3 feet on every side, so its volume is 3 times 3 times 3, which equals 27 cubic feet. Unlike weight, which shifts with moisture and soil type, this volume conversion is fixed geometry and holds for topsoil, mulch, sand, or any material sold by the cubic yard. The number matters because bulk topsoil is sold by the yard while bagged topsoil is sold by the cubic foot, so 27 is what lets you compare the two and plan an order in either unit.
Why is a cubic yard 27 cubic feet and not 3?
Because volume scales in three directions at once, not one. A yard is 3 feet, but a cubic yard is a cube that is 3 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 3 feet tall. To find volume you multiply all three, so 3 times 3 times 3 gives 27 cubic feet. The multiply-by-3 answer only accounts for length and ignores width and height. A helpful picture is stacking one-foot cubes inside the yard cube: a bottom layer of 3 by 3 is 9 cubes, and stacking that three high gives 27 cubes, each one cubic foot of topsoil.
How many bags of topsoil are in a cubic yard?
It depends on the bag size, and you find it by dividing 27 by the cubic feet per bag. A 1 cubic foot bag takes 27 bags to make a yard. A 0.75 cubic foot bag, which is also the typical size of a 40-pound bag, takes 36 bags. A 1.5 cubic foot bag takes 18 bags, and a small 0.5 cubic foot bag takes 54. Those counts are why bulk delivery usually wins for larger jobs, since lifting and opening three dozen bags to match one truckload is a lot of effort compared with a single scoop.
How many cubic feet are in a 40 lb bag of topsoil?
A 40-pound bag of topsoil holds roughly 0.75 cubic feet, though this is an estimate rather than a fixed figure. The reason it varies is moisture: a cubic foot of topsoil weighs about 74 to 100 pounds depending on how wet and dense it is, so 40 pounds could be as little as 0.4 cubic feet of heavy saturated soil or as much as 0.9 cubic feet of dry, fluffy soil. For planning, 0.75 cubic feet per 40-pound bag is a reliable middle estimate, which means it takes about 36 of these bags to equal one cubic yard.
How big is a scoop of topsoil?
A scoop is one bucket of a loader or skid steer, and its size depends on the machine, so it is not a fixed unit. At most landscape yards a scoop runs from about half a cubic yard to a full cubic yard, which is roughly 13.5 to 27 cubic feet. Many mid-size loader buckets hold close to a yard when heaped, so some suppliers treat one scoop as one yard, while smaller skid-steer buckets are nearer half a yard. Because the range is wide, always ask the supplier how many cubic feet or cubic yards their scoop holds before you buy.
How many cubic feet of topsoil do I need?
Multiply the length and width of your area in feet by the depth in feet, and the result is the cubic feet you need. The catch is depth, which is usually measured in inches, so divide the inches by 12 first. For a 10 by 12 foot bed at 3 inches deep, that is 10 times 12 times 0.25, which equals 30 cubic feet. Divide by 27 if you also want the figure in cubic yards. For irregular shapes, split the area into rectangles, work out each one, and add them together. A calculator will do all of this from your measurements.
How much does a cubic foot of topsoil cover?
A cubic foot of topsoil covers about 12 square feet spread 1 inch deep. At greater depths it covers proportionally less: about 6 square feet at 2 inches, 4 square feet at 3 inches, and 3 square feet at 4 inches. Scaling up to a full cubic yard of 27 cubic feet, a yard covers roughly 324 square feet at 1 inch, 108 square feet at 3 inches, and 81 square feet at 4 inches deep. Deciding on the right depth is the key step, since a light lawn topdressing stretches a given amount of soil far further than a deep planting bed does.
How do I convert cubic feet to cubic yards for topsoil?
Divide the number of cubic feet by 27, because one cubic yard equals 27 cubic feet. If you have 60 cubic feet, dividing by 27 gives about 2.2 cubic yards, which is the figure a bulk supplier wants. To go the other way, from yards to cubic feet, multiply by 27 instead, so 3 cubic yards is 81 cubic feet. A few conversions are worth memorizing: half a yard is 13.5 cubic feet, a third of a yard is 9 cubic feet, and a quarter yard is 6.75 cubic feet. Keeping 27 in mind lets you move between the units in either direction in seconds.
The quick version
A cubic yard of topsoil holds exactly 27 cubic feet, because a yard is a cube 3 feet on each side and 3 times 3 times 3 is 27. That single fact powers every topsoil conversion: multiply yards by 27 to get cubic feet, or divide cubic feet by 27 to get yards. It takes 27 of the 1 cubic foot bags, 36 of the 0.75 cubic foot or 40-pound bags, or 18 of the 1.5 cubic foot bags to fill a yard. A loader scoop runs anywhere from about 13.5 to 27 cubic feet depending on the machine, so always ask. And one cubic foot covers about 12 square feet at 1 inch deep, which makes a full yard cover about 108 square feet at a typical 3 inches.
For the related numbers, see how many bags make a yard, how much a yard of topsoil weighs, and how much topsoil you need. Confirm your volume with the Dirt Calculator or the Cubic Yard Calculator, browse more guides in the topsoil blog and the home calculators hub, or explore all the free tools on the Waldev homepage.
Disclaimer: This guide is for general planning and education only. Topsoil weight, coverage, and prices vary widely with moisture, soil type, region, and supplier, so treat every figure here as a starting estimate rather than an exact value. For a firm quantity, measure your own area and confirm the number with the Dirt Calculator; for a firm price, get a local quote before ordering.
University extension guidance on estimating soil and mulch quantities explains converting bed dimensions into cubic feet and cubic yards for an order. Preparing garden soil →
USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service resources cover soil properties and how soil volume and depth are assessed in the field. NRCS soils →