Outdoor LivingView full sizeCovered lounge, fire table & turf lawn
A modern pergola over a paved lounge, edged straight into a turf lawn that stays green all winter, with a plank path running the length of the lot.
2 photos
Artificial Turf · Seattle
Artificial Turf Installation in Seattle
Turf gets bought in Seattle for one of three reasons, and they lead to genuinely different installs. A dog owner needs drainage depth and an infill that will not hold odour. A family needs a surface that is not mud from November. And an enormous number of city gardens here simply never grew grass — shaded by the house, the neighbour's cedars and eight months of cloud, reseeded twice already. What all three share is that the base decides the outcome. Turf laid over undisturbed glacial till passes water straight through the backing and then hits hardpan, so it sits in a shallow reservoir under your lawn. That is what produces the soggy feel, the smell in pet installs and the slow settlement.
- Typical range
- $13–$24 per square foot installed
- From our base
- Base of operations — Capitol Hill
- Ground here
- Predominantly glacial till (Alderwood series) — a dense hardpan under 12–24 inches of topsoil that water sits on rather than passes through.
Covered outdoor lounge with a fire table beside an artificial turf lawn on a Seattle property
What we get called about
Artificial Turf problems specific to Seattle.
Seattle takes 38+ inches of rain a year and almost all of it arrives October to March. That single fact decides more landscaping outcomes here than plant choice ever does — a patio without a drainage plan is a patio that heaves, and a lawn on undisturbed till is a lawn that sits under water all winter.
- A north-facing city garden where grass has been reseeded twice and never taken
- A dog turning the same patch to bare mud every winter
- Children unable to use the garden from October to April
- A lawn too small and too shaded to justify storing a mower on a lot with no shed
- Moss winning against grass that never gets enough light to compete
Worth knowing in Seattle
Ask what happens to the water once it is through the backing. On Seattle till the honest answer has to involve a drainage base and somewhere for water to go — a quote that only describes the turf product is pricing half the job, and it is the half that decides whether you like it in three winters.
Why turf fails on Seattle ground, and it is never the turf
Modern turf backing is perforated and passes water at a rate far above anything our rainfall produces. The turf is not the bottleneck, which is why comparing products on drainage claims tells you almost nothing.
The failure happens underneath. Water passes through the backing, travels down through whatever was put beneath it, reaches the glacial till and stops — because till is a compacted hardpan that will not take water at any useful rate. If what sits between the turf and the till is a thin levelling layer of sand, you now have a saturated layer directly under the surface for six months of the year. That is what produces the spongy feel underfoot, the odour in dog installs and the slow uneven settlement that shows up in year two.
A base built as a drainage layer rather than a levelling course fixes it: excavated properly, built up in compacted free-draining crushed rock, graded to a fall, with a route for water to leave. On lots that also take runoff from uphill, that means solving the drainage before any turf goes down. It is more excavation than people expect and it is the entire difference between a turf lawn that lasts fifteen years and one you regret.
The method
How we build artificial turf, wherever the job is.
The sequence does not change between neighbourhoods — what changes is the ground it is applied to. Full detail on the artificial turf service page.
- 01
Check whether turf is actually the answer
Light, drainage, use and how much of the garden it should cover. A shaded 200-square-foot back garden and a sunny 1,200-square-foot play lawn are different recommendations.
- 02
Strip and excavate
Existing lawn and topsoil out, down to a depth that leaves room for a real base rather than a skim.
- 03
Build the drainage base
Crushed rock in compacted lifts, graded to a fall. On lots where water arrives from uphill this stage sometimes gains a drain before the turf goes anywhere near it.
- 04
Lay, seam and secure
Turf rolled out to relax, cut to the shapes, seamed, and fixed at every edge so nothing can lift.
- 05
Infill and brush
Infill spread and brushed in to hold the pile up. This is what stops turf looking flattened after a year — it is not optional.
What it costs in Seattle
$13–$24 per square foot installed
Seattle turf runs $13 to $24 per square foot installed, and it genuinely varies by neighbourhood — Laurelhurst, Madison Park and Magnolia typically land at $17–24, while South Seattle sits closer to $13–16. The driver is not the postcode but what those lots need: access, excavation depth, drainage and turf specification, plus how much base has to be imported before anything green goes down.
No down payment
You pay after the project is fully completed.
Fixed price, agreed up front
The estimate you sign is the price you pay.
0% interest for up to 6 months
Spread the cost with no interest.
Warranty on hardscaping
Covers hardscape work; vegetation excluded.
Local questions
Artificial Turf in Seattle, answered.
General questions about this service are on the service page. These are the ones that only come up here.
Why does turf cost more in some Seattle neighbourhoods than others?
Because the lots need different things, not because of the address itself. Installs in Laurelhurst, Madison Park and Magnolia typically run $17 to $24 per square foot while South Seattle sits closer to $13 to $16, and the gap is made up of access, excavation depth, drainage scope and turf specification. A garden reachable only through a narrow side return costs more in labour than one with a driveway. Ground that needs a drain before the base costs more than ground that does not. We price what your lot actually requires rather than applying a neighbourhood rate.
Will turf smell if we have a dog?
Only if it is installed badly, and that is genuinely the whole of it. Urine passes through a permeable backing into the base beneath. If that base drains and gets rinsed periodically, there is nothing left to hold odour. If it sits on compacted soil or undisturbed till, the liquid has nowhere to go and the smell is inevitable within a season. For dog owners we specify a permeable backing, an infill that does not retain ammonia the way older sand-only fills did, and enough drainage depth for an animal that uses the same corner every day. A hose-down every few weeks in summer is the only maintenance.
Should I fix my real lawn instead?
Sometimes, and we will tell you when. If your garden gets four or more hours of direct sun, drains reasonably, and the problem is neglect rather than position, then aeration, top-dressing, overseeding and a proper feeding regime will get you a good lawn for a fraction of the cost. Where that advice does not apply is the classic Seattle shaded north-facing garden or the dog run — those have usually been reseeded two or three times already, and no amount of seed changes the light. The tell is history: repeated failure despite reasonable care is the site talking, not the lawn.
How long does turf last in this climate?
Fifteen to twenty years of domestic use on a proper base, and Seattle is unusually kind to it. The thing that ages turf fastest is intense UV, and we get considerably less of it than almost anywhere in the country — the fading you see in southern markets is largely not a problem here. The two things that shorten its life are both install faults: an inadequate base that lets the surface go uneven, and skipping the infill so the pile flattens permanently under foot traffic. Brushing the pile up once or twice a year in high-traffic routes keeps it looking right.
Serving Seattle and surrounding neighbourhoods
Base of operations — Capitol Hill.
Capitol Hill · Ballard · Queen Anne · Magnolia · West Seattle · Green Lake · Wedgwood · Madison Park · Laurelhurst · Mount Baker · Seward Park · Fremont · Wallingford · Columbia City
98101 · 98102 · 98103 · 98104 · 98105 · 98106 · 98107 · 98108 · 98109 · 98112 · 98115 · 98116 · 98117 · 98118 · 98119 · 98121 · 98122 · 98125 · 98126 · 98133 · 98134 · 98136 · 98144 · 98146 · 98177 · 98199
Recent work
Built in Seattle.
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Get a turf quote for your yard in Seattle.
We come out, look at the ground, and put a fixed written price together. No deposit, and it does not change once agreed.
Other services in Seattle
Artificial Turf in nearby areas
Free estimate
Artificial Turf in Seattle — get a price.
Three minutes on the form. We reply during office hours, Monday – Friday, 9:00 AM – 7:00 PM, and we come out and look at the site before quoting anything.
Or call (425) 533-9734
Request received
Thank you — we have your details. We reply during office hours, Monday – Friday, 9:00 AM – 7:00 PM. If it is urgent, call (425) 533-9734.