They share the small rectangular format and part ways on almost everything else:

Colour is the headline: clay's colour IS the fired body — iron-rich clays burn to reds, oranges, blues, and buffs that cannot fade, because there is no pigment to lose. Fifty-year-old clay paths hold their colour; concrete blocks carry pigmented surface layers that visibly lighten within a decade and expose grey aggregate as they wear.

Wear behaviour: fired clay is harder than most concrete and wears by polishing gently rather than eroding; edges stay crisp for decades. Concrete's softer body rounds and pits faster under traffic.

Dimensional character: clay pavers show slight kiln variation — a few millimetres of size and pleasing tonal movement — which gives the handmade look and asks a little more of the layer. Concrete blocks are mould-exact and faster to lay by the square metre.

Absorption and upkeep: quality clay pavers absorb less water than concrete blocks, feed moss less readily, and never need sealing; concrete benefits from it.

Price and range: concrete wins on upfront cost and on engineered specials (permeable systems, kerbs); clay costs more per square metre but historically amortises over a much longer attractive life.

The rule of thumb the trade uses: budget-led area coverage → concrete blocks; character, heritage settings, and forever-surfaces → clay. Both make excellent driveways when the right thickness meets the right base.

The pattern is both the look and — under wheels — part of the engineering:

1. 45° or 90° herringbone is the structural champion: every paver is locked by its neighbours against rotation, so braking and turning tyres cannot creep the surface. It is the default (and effectively required) bond for driveways and any trafficked clay surface. 45° reads more dynamic and wastes slightly more in edge cuts; 90° is thriftier and quieter visually.
2. Running bond (stretcher) — the classic path pattern: fast, economical, calm — and directional, subtly leading the eye along its length. Fine for pedestrian duty; under vehicles it can creep unless firmly edge-restrained.
3. Basketweave — pairs laid alternately: instant cottage-garden heritage, best on foot-traffic paths and patios; its unlocked pairs dislike tyres.
4. Stack bond, soldier courses, and borders — stack bond is a crisp modern statement for patios; soldier-course borders frame any field pattern and double as the edge restraint's visual finish.

Two practical pattern notes: small formats turn curves beautifully — fanning a running bond around a bend or radiusing a herringbone border is exactly what clay does that big slabs cannot; and always plan the pattern from a set-out line, not a wall (walls are never straight), with border courses laid first to close the field neatly. Whatever the choice, the pattern's structural value only exists inside proper edge restraints — the unglamorous concrete-haunched edging that keeps the whole interlocked field in compression.

Emphatically yes — clay paving's origin story is street-making, and streets fired a century ago still carry traffic. A clay driveway needs the same three disciplines as any flexible paving, plus one clay-specific check:

1. Paver spec: driveway duty wants pavers of 50–65 mm thickness (pedestrian-only ranges run thinner) with a declared paving grade — clay pavers are made to paving standards covering strength, abrasion, and freeze-thaw; kiln-fired walling bricks are not pavers and spall under wheels and frost.
2. Build-up: excavate to competent ground; 150–200 mm compacted MOT Type 1 sub-base; 30–40 mm screeded sharp sand laying course; pavers laid in herringbone, vibrated down with a plate compactor (rubber-matted to protect faces); kiln-dried sand swept and vibrated into joints until full. This is flexible construction — the interlocked bed moves as one raft.
3. Edges: every trafficked clay field lives or dies by its edge restraints — concrete-bedded edging courses or kerbs on all free edges, or the herringbone slowly migrates toward the lawn.
4. The clay-specific check: size tolerance. Clay's slight kiln variation means driveway ranges are sold with laying tolerances suited to machine-flat drives; extremely rustic handmade ranges belong on paths where their movement charms rather than puddles.

Maintained with swept joints topped up after the first winter, a clay drive's running costs are near zero — no fading to disguise, no sealing cycle, and single-paver repairs from the spare pile that disappear into the field within a season.

Fading is the one failure clay cannot commit: the colour is the fired mineralogy of the body, identical at the surface and the core. Cut any old clay paver and the face colour continues straight through — which is why Victorian paths still read red and blue after a century of sun that would have bleached three generations of pigmented surfaces. Buyers can treat colour permanence as absolute across reds, oranges, blues, buffs, and the multi-fired blends.

What clay does instead is weather — a patina rather than a loss:

• Surface sheen: traffic gently polishes the wear face over years; heritage paths get their soft lustre from footsteps, not sealant.
• Tone deepening: weathering and moisture cycles slightly deepen and enrich tones, especially in blends; the drive looks more settled at year five than year one.
• Efflorescence: new clay can show temporary white lime/salt bloom in the first seasons — it weathers off naturally and should not be acid-scrubbed into a bigger problem.
• Organic life: in damp shade, clay hosts moss and lichen like any surface — pleasing on a cottage path, and controllable with ordinary cleaning where unwanted.
• Edges and faces: quality paving-grade clay keeps crisp arrises for decades; chips reveal identical colour beneath and vanish visually.

The maintenance meaning: there is nothing to re-colour, ever. The weathered state IS the designed state — a fact that changes the economics of clay against every surface whose appearance peaks on installation day.

Clay paving supports two schools, and choosing deliberately avoids the classic hybrid mistakes:

Flexible construction (the modern default): screeded sharp-sand laying course over compacted sub-base, pavers laid tight-jointed (2–4 mm), vibrated to level, joints filled with kiln-dried sand. Merits: fast, self-draining at the joints, tolerant of minor ground movement, and single-paver repairable in minutes. This is the method for driveways (herringbone, restrained edges) and most paths. Its maintenance signature is topping up joint sand occasionally — or stabilising it with a polymeric/joint-fix product where weeds and washout annoy.

Rigid construction (the heritage method): pavers bedded on mortar over a concrete base with mortared joints of 6–10 mm, pointed like brickwork. Merits: the traditional look with defined joints, immune to sand washout and ants, suited to formal paths, step treads, and edgings. Costs: slower, needs movement joints on large areas, and repairs mean cutting out mortar.

The rules that prevent the classic failures: never mix the schools casually — mortar joints on a sand bed crack, and sand joints on a concrete bed sit in water; always restrain flexible edges in concrete; on rigid work use paving-grade mortar and clean faces instantly (cement stains clay); and respect each school's base — flexible over compacted aggregate, rigid over sound concrete.

Joint appearance is the final design decision: tight sand joints read as a continuous carpet of clay; mortared joints read as garden architecture. Both are correct — the garden's formality decides.

The palette is the kiln's chemistry, richer than most buyers expect:

• Reds and oranges — iron-rich clays fired in oxidising kilns: the classic warm range from soft terracotta through deep brick red, the default of cottage gardens and heritage streetscapes.
• Blues, blacks, and smoked tones — the same clays fired in reduction: the famous 'blue' engineering-adjacent shades from steel blue-grey to near-black, prized for borders, contrast bands, and contemporary schemes.
• Buffs, creams, and yellows — low-iron clays: pale, sunlit tones that lift shaded courtyards and pair with limestone and light renders.
• Multis and blends — pavers that shift tone across each unit and pack (kiln-position variation embraced as design): laid, they produce the lively, mottled surface that makes clay fields read hand-made. Most premium ranges are blends.
• Finishes: smooth wire-cut faces (crisp, contemporary), tumbled/antiqued (softened edges, instant age, the reclaimed look without reclamation lotteries), handmade/creased textures (maximum character), and chamfered-edge driveway profiles that resist chipping under wheels.

Buying craft for colour: order all packs from one production batch and blend while laying from three packs minimum — clay's charm banding into stripes is purely a laying-sequence error; view samples wet and dry (blues especially transform in rain); and remember the colour runs through — your choice is permanent in the best sense, so make it against the house brick and the planting it will live beside, not under warehouse lighting.

Clay asks the least of any premium paving — the routine:

The basics: sweep regularly and rinse seasonally; that alone keeps most clay surfaces presentable for years. No sealing is required or traditionally recommended — clay's low absorption does the sealer's job, and impregnators add little beyond stain insurance under overhanging trees or barbecue zones.

Moss and algae colonise shade and damp joints rather than the paver itself: treat with a paving-safe biocide once or twice a year in problem corners, brush off the dead growth, and improve the real causes where possible (overhanging growth, blocked falls). Pressure washing works — moderate pressure, angled across not into joints — but each aggressive pass on flexible paving strips joint sand that must be swept back in, so brush-and-biocide beats blasting as the routine.

Weeds grow in jointing sand, not through pavers: the escalation is hand-hoeing and a joint brush; then refill joints with kiln-dried sand after cleaning; then upgrade to polymeric jointing sand on problem areas, which sets firm against seeding while staying flexible. On mortared (rigid) work, weeds mean failed pointing — repoint the failed lines.

The repair economy: keep a spare stack from the original batch. A stained, chipped, or service-trench paver lifts out of flexible paving in minutes and the replacement blends within a season — a repairability no large-format surface matches.

Winter: clay's low absorption makes it strongly frost-resistant; use grit rather than heavy rock salt on the blues (salt scumming), and re-sand joints in spring. Total annual attention for a clay path: an hour. That is the material's quiet argument.