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Design your deck in 3D
Set the size, pick your decking, add railings and stairs, and watch the framing size itself underneath. Joists, beams, posts and footings, screened against the AWC DCA 6 / IRC prescriptive tables. No account, no card, nothing to install.
Build decks for a living? See contractor plans
deckpro.studio
Free 3D deck designer — no signup
Loading your 3D deck…
What this deck takes
24 × 20 ft · 3 ft above grade · freestanding
Sized live from the deck above against the AWC DCA 6-2015 / IRC prescriptive tables, for gravity load only: DCA 6-2015 covers single-level decks attached to the house to resist lateral load and no deeper than they are wide (p.2), and this design is outside that scope, so its lateral bracing needs a licensed design professional. No account, no email. Counts, not prices: a materials number without labor, permits and site conditions reads like a quote while meaning nothing.
Deck area
480 sq ft
88 ft of edge
Joists
2x10 @ 16"
21 joists · 0 hangers
Beams
4 × (2)2x10
outer beam at the rim
Posts & footings
18 posts
10 at 21" × 8", 8 at 20" × 8" pads, 12" pier form above each · 102 bags of concrete
Deck boards
72
1,152 lf of composite
Fasteners
1,056 clips
176 face screws · 7 lb nails
Railing
84 lf
16 sections · 17 posts
Stairs
4 treads
1 run to grade
The deck above stays in this browser. An account keeps the decks you design there, prices the whole job, and turns it into a branded proposal and blueprint sheets. The full order sheet and CSV export unlock when you pick a plan.
Drag to orbit, pinch or scroll to zoom. Your design is kept in this browser — there is no account behind it.
What you do
Type the size or drag a corner in 3D, choose composite, PVC or wood boards and a board direction, drop railings on the open sides, and put stairs where they need to land.
What it works out
Joist size and spacing, how many beam lines, post spacing, footing diameter and thickness, stair risers and stringers — then every material those add up to.
What it will not do
Quote you — or price you. This page shows no dollar figures on purpose: a materials number without labor, permits and site conditions reads like a quote while meaning nothing. Prices come from a contractor who has seen the yard.
What it takes to build it
Below is a preview of the takeoff for the deck you drew above — the actual list of things that get delivered, counted, not priced. Edit the design and every count follows. It is the same generator that produces a contractor's order sheet inside deckpro; the complete sheet, priced at a contractor's own supplier costs, is what the paid plans are for.
Your deck
2 to 6 ft. A placeholder until your building department gives you the frost depth.
Applied to every line except the board count, which already carries its own.
The pile in the driveway — counted, not priced
192 sq ft
52 distinct line items, every one counted by the engine
No prices here on purpose: lumber moves weekly and by region, and a materials number without labor, permits, access and margin reads like a quote while meaning nothing. The count is what keeps an order honest — the price belongs to your contractor and their supplier.
Deck boards
29
461 lf
Joists
15
72 lf of rim
Posts / footings
4
23 bags of concrete
Hidden clips
400
112 face screws
- Verify
IRC-R403.1.4Footing depth must reach below the local frost line — verify with your AHJ (IRC R403.1.4). The default depth is not assumed code-adequate.
DeckingBoards, fascia & deck fasteners11 items
| Item | Qty | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Composite Deck Board — Grooved field, 5.5" × 16' (waste incl.) | 25 | ea |
| Composite Deck Board — Square-edge perimeter / picture frame, 5.5" × 16' (waste incl.) | 4 | ea |
| Fascia / Rim Trim — 1×12 × 12' | 4 | ea |
+8 more items — a free contractor trial prices this whole job; the full order sheet, at your supplier costs and exportable, comes with a plan.
SubstructureJoists, beams, posts, hangers & footings — full framing takeoff24 items
| Item | Qty | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| 2x10 Pressure-Treated Joist @ 16" OC × 12' sticks (Southern Pine No. 2; main deck 12' run — 15 joists) | 15 | ea |
| Rim Joist — 2x10 PT × 16' (covers 72 lf) | 5 | ea |
| Joist Blocking — 2x10 PT × 16' (covers 16 lf) | 1 | ea |
+21 more items — a free contractor trial prices this whole job; the full order sheet, at your supplier costs and exportable, comes with a plan.
RailingsRail sections, posts & connectors5 items
| Item | Qty | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Aluminum Railing — 6' section | 8 | ea |
| Level-Rail Newel Post (36" guard height) | 10 | ea |
| Post Base / Top Rail Connectors | 20 | ea |
+2 more items — a free contractor trial prices this whole job; the full order sheet, at your supplier costs and exportable, comes with a plan.
StairsStringers, treads, risers & landing pads12 items
| Item | Qty | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Stair Stringers — 2x12 PT × 8' (5 per 48" flight @ ~12" o.c. — composite treads: min 4, max 12" o.c., Trex stair chart — verify your product; 5 risers) | 5 | ea |
| Stair Stringer Hangers — sloped, one per stringer at each flight top (min. 625 lb vertical capacity, DCA6-2015 Figure 31 — verify part) | 5 | ea |
| Stair Base Posts — 4x4 PT × 8' (one under each inner stringer where the stair meets grade, cut ~3.4' from the footing to the bottom tread; the stringers bear on a 2x4 bearing block on the post, never on the pad — DCA6-2015 p.22, Figure 34) | 3 | ea |
+9 more items — a free contractor trial prices this whole job; the full order sheet, at your supplier costs and exportable, comes with a plan.
Quantities are the engine's, not a rule of thumb: board counts carry their own waste (plus a diagonal bonus on 45° layouts), hidden clips are counted per square foot of grooved field and bought by the bucket, ledger bolts are spaced off the DCA6 Table 5 lookup, and concrete is bagged from the real pier volume. Prices are yours.
What actually drives the cost of a deck
Square footage is the number everyone quotes and the weakest predictor in the list. Two decks of identical area can differ by a factor of three, and it is nearly always one of these five things.
Height above grade. A deck 18 inches up needs short posts, small footings and no stairs to speak of. The same deck 9 feet up needs tall posts, much bigger footings, a guard on every open side, a long stair with a landing, and — often — a beam the prescriptive tables will not cover. Height is the single most expensive variable on a deck.
The decking you pick. The board line alone swings several-fold between pressure-treated and capped PVC or tropical hardwood, and the fastening system moves with it: grooved composite boards use hidden clips at 2.4 per square foot at 16-inch joist spacing, sold 90 to a bucket, while square-edge boards are face-screwed. Change the material in the takeoff and watch which lines move.
Board direction. A 45-degree layout looks better and costs more twice over: it needs tighter joist spacing, which means more joists and more hangers, and it wastes roughly 15% more decking in offcuts. Picture-framing adds square-edge perimeter boards and the fasteners to face-screw them.
What is under the ground. Footings are sized across by load and down by frost. A deck in Florida and the same deck in Minnesota carry identical framing on wildly different piers — concrete is bagged from the real pier volume here, at 0.6 cubic feet of mixed fill per 80 lb bag, so a deeper frost line shows up immediately in the bag count.
Railing. Rail is priced by the section, and cable or glass costs several times what pressure-treated wood does. On a small deck with a lot of open edge, railing can out-cost the decking.
When to expect the number to be higher
The takeoff is materials on a clear, level site. Real projects add things it cannot see: demolition and disposal of an old deck, a permit and inspections, a footing that hits rock or a utility, machine access that does not exist so everything is barrowed, ledger work on a house with brick veneer or stucco (which the prescriptive method does not permit attachment to at all), and anything structural the tables do not cover — a hot tub, a roof, an outdoor kitchen, a second storey.
Then there is labor, which on a typical residential deck is in the same order as the materials. A contractor's price is not the material list plus a markup; it is the crew, the equipment, the insurance and the warranty. What the takeoff is good for is walking into that conversation knowing exactly what is in the pile in the driveway — and being able to ask about any line that looks off.
Where the framing numbers come from
Structural sizing on this page is a screen against transcribed tables from one identified document — AWC DCA 6-2015, Prescriptive Residential Wood Deck Construction Guide (based on the 2015 IRC), © 2018 American Wood Council. AWC publishes it free. The load basis is 40 psf live plus 10 psf dead, No. 2 grade lumber, wet service, L/360 deflection. Stairs are screened against IRC R311.7 and guards against R312.1.
You can check any of it member by member: joist span calculator, beam & footing calculator, deck stair calculator, ledger fastener spacing and deck material calculator. Each one shows the table cell behind its answer, and each one stops answering where the prescriptive tables stop.
Common questions
Is this deck designer really free, with no signup?
Yes. The 3D designer on this page runs in your browser with no account and no card, and designing asks for nothing — the one thing that asks for an email address is the optional download, which turns the summary into a one-page plan PDF for your contractor or your building department. Your design is kept in that browser, so a refresh does not lose it — but it is not on an account and it will not follow you to another device. If you want a design kept, priced with a contractor's own supplier costs, exported as a proposal or turned into a blueprint set, that is what the paid contractor plans do.
How many deck boards do I need?
It depends on the board width and length, not just the square footage, which is why a rule of thumb misses. The takeoff on this page counts the grooved field boards and the square-edge perimeter boards separately, adds your waste allowance, and adds a further 15% on a 45-degree layout because diagonal boards produce far more offcut. Enter your dimensions and it gives you the count and the linear feet.
Does the designer give me a material list?
It gives you the counts for every big category of the deck you drew — area, joist size and spacing, beam lines, posts and footings, deck boards and linear feet, hidden clips (counted at 2.4 per square foot of grooved field framed 16 inches on center, and bought 90 to a bucket), face screws, framing nails by the pound, railing and stairs — plus a preview of the line-item order sheet below it. On a contractor trial that sheet is a preview — it fades after the first few lines; the complete sheet, every line of it, comes with a paid plan. Most deck material calculators divide area by board coverage and add ten percent; this one counts the fasteners too, off the framing you drew.
Can I get a price for my deck from this?
No — deliberately. This page counts materials; it does not price them. Lumber prices move weekly and vary enormously by region, and labor, permits, access, disposal, footings in bad soil and margin are all real costs no web page can know. The count is what stops you being surprised at the lumber yard; the number you sign should come from a contractor who has stood in your yard.
What building code does the framing follow?
Joists, beams, posts and footings are screened against the AWC DCA 6-2015 prescriptive tables — the guide based on the 2015 IRC — at 40 psf live plus 10 psf dead load, and stairs against IRC R311.7. It is a code screen, not stamped engineering, and your local Authority Having Jurisdiction governs. Where a design falls outside the prescriptive tables, the engine says so rather than inventing a value.
Does the 3D deck designer work on a phone?
Yes — it runs in a mobile browser with touch controls, and there is nothing to install. A tablet or laptop is more comfortable for detailed work simply because you can see more of the deck at once.
Build decks for a living?
The paid side keeps the projects, prices them at your supplier costs and margin, and turns them into branded proposals, blueprint sheets and CSV order sheets — plus your own designer link, so a homeowner's design lands in your pipeline instead of a decking brand's.
Estimate only — not an engineered design. Spans and sizes are screened against the AWC DCA 6-2015 / IRC prescriptive baseline at 40 psf live + 10 psf dead load; quantities are takeoff arithmetic and trade practice, which those documents do not publish. Local codes and amendments vary; your Authority Having Jurisdiction (AHJ) and a licensed design professional govern. Verify everything with a permit and a licensed pro before ordering or building.